Ex Gov. Oshiomhole

Jethro Ibileke/Benin

Immediate past Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, has berated the leadership of the State chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), over its criticisms of the 5-star Central Hospital Complex in Benin commissioned just before he left office in 2016.

The former Governor was reacting to the allegation by the PDP that he borrowed equipment which he installed in the hospital to deceive President Muhammadu Buhari to commission the project last year. The former governor described the allegation as the “cry of people still licking their wounds from the Supreme Court defeat.”

According to the governor, the contractor has been bringing the equipment and they are being mounted, adding that what delayed the completion was the scarcity of forex which, according to him, has been sorted out.

His words, “First, is that, it is good news for them to agree that a new hospital has been built because in some other statements, they had said there was no new hospital. I have seen PDP turn out numbers that did not make sense even to a fool as regards the amount of the project.

“The only point that I think is worth commenting on is when I read somewhere that we hired or borrowed equipment to bring to the Hospital for the President to commission. Again, it shows how empty headed PDP leadership in Edo State and their spokesperson are.

“If you borrowed equipment from someone, how come the lender has not come to recover his equipment and those equipment are still there. The fortunate thing which everybody knows is the fact that the government I headed, paid 75 percent of the total value of the equipment that we have ordered and they are state-of-the-art equipment, as you can see even from the one that has been delivered and installed.

“But the contractor, Vermont, is not a one-man business; they are not one local contractor that PDP can go and sublet contract to. Verment is recognized even in Europe. They run the largest hospital in Austria; they are world-class hospital equipment manufacturers, but they just got caught in the foreign exchange crisis, that they could not get enough forex to procure to order for the equipment. These are not equipment you order off the shelf.

“As we speak, go to that hospital tomorrow, you will find that equipment are coming and they are installing them. I must thank the CBN Governor who I had to call on the phone to assist us.

“Today, the equipment are arriving and they are installing, and I know for sure from my last inquiry I know that they will be done by October. Then the hospital will have state of the art equipment better than any hospital anywhere in Nigeria by the time those equipment are installed. That is my dream and I am glad that is the reality.

“I don’t want to join issues with people who are licking their wounds. My pride is that the PDP said; ‘who is he, he thinks that politics is labour, we will teach him a lesson.’ Under eight years, I am their professor and they are all failed politicians from their oga to the least of them,” Oshiomhole taunted.