LAUTECH Teaching Hospital

The Oyo State House of Assembly on Tuesday inaugurated a special committee to investigate the award of contracts at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso and its outreach in Oyo town.

Inaugurating the committee, the Speaker, Mr Michael Adeyemo, said the committee would be headed by the Deputy Speaker, Mr Musa Abdulwasi, with a mandate to report to the House within a month.

Adeyemo said that if there was any need to issue a warrant of arrest on the contractors handling the project, the committee should subsequently make a recommendation.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that this followed a report submitted by the Committee on Health that the House had previously invited Swiss Biostadt and Fast Track Technologies to give reasons for the delay in contracts awarded since 2010.

“The contractors have been invited on five different occasions and have refused to honour the invitations of this honourable House.

“The contractors collected a huge sum of money but little work was done and their attitude towards the completion of the work is not encouraging,’’ Adeyemo said.

Meanwhile, the lawmakers have also urged the state government to increase the budgetary allocation to the five technical colleges in the state.

This followed a motion by Mr Muideen Olagunju (Accord/Oyo East/Oyo West), which seeks to overhaul vocational and technical education in the state.

The motion, seconded by Mr Gbenga Oyekola (LP/Atiba), was titled: “Urgent Need to Overhaul Vocational and Technical Education in Oyo State with Particular Reference to Proper Funding of Government Technical Colleges in Oyo State.’’

According to Olagunju, technical colleges in the state have been the bedrock of socio-economic development in the state.

“As important as the learning opportunities in the technical colleges appear to be, government seems to be paying scant attention to the provision of qualitative education in the colleges.

“In the Oyo State Appropriation Law 2017, only a paltry sum of N1 million was approved as running grant for the five colleges,’’ he said.

(NAN)