The Edo State government has said the state’s chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is jittery ahead of this year’s governorship election as the new five-star facilities at the Benin Central Hospital will soon be completed.
The Adams Oshiomhole administration said it was saddening that PDP’s leaders resorted to blackmail by alleging that the governor abandoned the Stella Obasanjo Women and Children Hospital, which was built during Lucky Igbinedion’s administration for a new hospital.
The Executive Director of Media and Public Affairs in the Governor’s Office, John Mayaki, addressed yesterday in Benin, the state capital, on PDP’s allegation.
The governor’s aide said the Stella Obasanjo Women and Children Hospital was never abandoned because it was conceived, built and inaugurated by the Igbinedion administration.
Also, the governor’s wife, Iara, said the people of the state would soon enjoy the health care they deserve when the hospital is completed.
Mrs Oshiomhole, who spoke when she accompanied her husband to inspect work at the hospital, expressed delight at the state of the art facilities at the hospital.
Mayaki said the PDP should hail Oshiomhole for equiping the Central Hospital to compete with any other hospital in the world while the Stella Obasanjo was running at full capacity.
The governor’s aide accused the PDP of sponsoring a misleading report, adding that it was meant to mislead unsuspecting residents about Oshiomhole’s good intention to give the state a world-class health facility.
He said: “This deliberate falsehood negates cooperate social responsibility and could trigger civil disobedience. The Stella Obasanjo Women and Children Hospital was a landmark project that was achieved, commissioned and is functioning till date. The present administration is leveraging on that to provide the needed health care deliverables for the good people of the state.
“However, it is common place that successive governments, which meant well for the people, must plan and provide for the future by expanding social facilities to meet the ever-increasing population density, rural-urban migration and overstretching of available social facilities.”