PREMIUM TIMES
On a Thursday in August, an elderly woman gripped her daughter’s hand for support as they slowly descended the stairs. They had just seen a doctor at the Medical Out-patient Department (MOPD) in a one-storey building of the 131-year-old General Hospital, Odan, Lagos State.
Onlookers outside the clinic’s waiting area watched the frail patient’s hesitant steps with empathy. The hospital does not have facilities for people with mobility issues or special needs.
“We have been coming since last week for cardiovascular reasons. People her age should be attended to downstairs, but unfortunately, their MOPD is upstairs,” the daughter said, declining the reporter’s request for their names.
One of the onlookers, Kazeem Babalola, 65, escorted a family member to the facility. He said he had used the hospital since he was a kid.
“It ought to have developed beyond this as the oldest hospital in the state. Instead of properly renovating and equipping it, they patch and paint. Last year, if you remember, a doctor died at the doctor’s quarters. It was a preventable death caused by negligence.
“A state like Lagos shouldn’t be managing buildings over 100 years old. What if this old woman falls?” Mr Babalola said.
The general hospital was founded in 1893 as a British military hospital and was strategically located between Broad Street and Marina on Lagos Island. It was handed over to the Nigerian government on 1 October 1960, Nigeria’s Independence Day, and later to the Lagos State government on 7 May 1967 after the country was split into 12 states by the military administration of Yakubu Gowon.
Poor maintenance
The incident Mr Babalola cited involved Vware Diaso, the medical doctor killed when an elevator crashed from the 10th floor at the hospital’s doctor’s quarters in August 2023.
Ms Diaso was on internship at the hospital and had less than two weeks to complete the mandatory one-year programme.
Her colleagues accused the hospital management of ignoring complaints about the faulty elevator.
The Medical Guild, an association of doctors working in general hospitals and teaching hospitals in the state, later revealed that the elevator was installed by a contractor who did not have an “elevator system installation certification.”
The state government subsequently sacked and blacklisted the facility managers in charge of the hospital and suspended the general manager of the Lagos State Infrastructure and Asset Management Agency (LASIAMA) following recommendations by a panel that looked into the accident.
When PREMIUM TIMES checked precisely one year after the incident, the elevator had not been fixed. However, a signpost outside the building stated that Julius Berger, a leading construction company in Nigeria, had been contracted to rehabilitate the 10-storey building. The project duration is 36 weeks: April 2024 to January 2025. The government has yet to disclose how much it awarded the contract to the company.
Renovation, maintenance
Records show that the state government spent N1.23 billion on renovations and maintenance at the hospital between 2021 and 2023. Yet, a tour of the facility revealed many structures in disrepair.
The Lagos State Public Procurement Agency (PPA) records showed that HK Designs Limited was awarded a contract for “completion of renovations, renovations and scheduled maintenance.” However, the contracts did not clearly state which parts of the hospital were fixed, raising questions of accountability and transparency.
However, the same contractor carried out the renovation of the general kitchen, pharmacy store/dispensing, laundry, and “provision of entrance welcome centre first and second perimeter fence” for N272 million.
READ THE FULL STORY IN PREMIUM TIMES
