The Kogi State government has in its 2020 appropriation law, budgeted the sum of N300 million for its Deputy Governor’s office, a budget that has since been published on the state official website.
This is even as a General Hospital at Idah area of Kogi state with a population of 79,815 according to the 2006 national census has since collapsed.
Personnel and patients at the hospital continue to recount their terrible experience of its dilapidated nature while calling on the government to help fund it and save Idah residents from dying from sicknesses that can easily be treated.
A senior staff nurse in the hospital while speaking to Media Advocacy West Africa Foundation (MAWA-Foundation) narrated how many buildings in the premises have since collapsed and not been put to use and equipment went obsolete.
She, however, recounted how patients in the hospital contribute money to repair spoilt electric sockets and buy petrol for an alternative electricity source.
Mr. Sunday Onuh, one of the patients who spent a week at the hospital treating Malaria and Typhoid, narrated to MAWA how he contributed money together with other patients to fuel a generator for a light to use a fan that will help reduce mosquito bites.
A senior official of the hospital, while expressing his frustration, described the hospital as a forgotten useful son of the state.
“This is the only hospital that has the capacity to offer medical services to all Idah residents and its environs, but unfortunately it is now best described as a dead horse because there is no funding, and it is in a near collapse,” a senior government official said.
Worse still, despite allocating the sum of N300 million to the office of Mr. Edward Onoja, the Deputy Governor, the state allocated the sum of N10 million for the training of medical personnel and N200 million for the purchase of hospital equipment for hospitals across the state, while zero allocation was made for hospital personnel recruitment.
