Regina Otokpa
The Minister of Education, Maruf Olatunji Alausa, has inaugurated a Technical Working Group (TWG) to revamp the State House Medical Centre.
Alausa said President Bola Tinubu tasked him to upgrade the medical centre using the public-private partnership.
He added that the presidential directive was aimed at finding a way to bring better efficiency in the way public institutions and infrastructures.
He said: “When you do public-private partnership or new concession of public infrastructure, you bring better efficiency, you bring sustainability into such institutions or programmes and that’s what Mr. President has set out to do with the new Statehouse Medical Centre and it’s not here alone, he is going to be doing this in other sectors.
“We’re moving this forward to help sustain significant improvement, the significant investment that has been done in the State of America Center, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. We cannot be wasteful to let that investment just sit and not get better value.”
Alausa explained that although the Statehouse Medical Centre was purposely built for the first family and the the vice president’s family as well, the scope of services has been expanded to include the National Assembly, judiciary, and the civil servants as well.
He said: “This is being carefully done, we don’t even know who is going to win the concession, how it’s going to be done. That’s why we’re assembling this technical working group to sit and seek on the best way out.
“The people at BPP, they’re giving us clear implementation framework on how we can do this so if you ask me today, what’s going to be the nature? Is it BPP? Is it concessioning? Is it management, company, management team? I don’t know. That’s one of the things this technical working group is saddled with doing.
“But then, at the end of it all, once they decide, agree, decide, we will internationalize the care that will be delivered at the new Statehouse Medical Centre. We will be able to get international experts, Nigerians alike and other people to come in and work there. We will meet the present agenda of re-engaging the diaspora health professional in the country.
“Remember, Nigeria has excellent health care providers all around the world. They’re yearning to come back and this is an opportunity that we’re trying to open up for them to come. We will engage them. At the end of it all, this center will provide world-class health care to the citizens.”
Chairman of the committee, Salma Ibrahim-Anas, who is Special Adviser to the President on Health, applauded the minister for his support and foresight on the project which she described as laudable.
“This is a task that you have given to us but you’ve made our task so easy because you’ve already done a lot of deep dive into the issues and you already put the vision for us on what to achieve, which I would totally agree with the vision.
“We must revamp our systems. We must make, especially the first family must have access, and all their team, access to quality health care.”
The Technical Working Group’s terms of reference include; framework implementation, procurement process management, evaluation and recommendation, stakeholder engagement and diligence, contract repository support and timeline and deliverables
Other members of the TWG are Funmi Badmus from office of the chief of staff to the President; Tunji Olaopa, Chairman, Civil Service Commission; Ibrahim Abdulkadir, Deputy Director from Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF); Obi Alio Chekeubechi from the Ministry of Justice; David Atuwo from the Ministry of Education; Agbor Neji Ebuta, Permanent Secretary State House; Adebowale Adedokun, DG, Bureau of Public Procurement; Akintunde Sawyerr MD NELFUND, and Olusegun Akinyelure
