Governor Obaseki, who called for support from all stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of all programmes and projects embarked on by his government to better the lives of the people, said the revamping of institutions is part of his administration’s commitment to build on the legacy of the State’s founding fathers.
Obaseki said, “60 years ago, our founding fathers, having broken away from the Western Region came and founded the Mid-West Region and decided that an institution like this was very important to our healthcare system and therefore founded this school 60 years ago.
“For some accidents of history, people came along the line and never appreciated an institution like this. But COVID-19 opened my eyes to the State of healthcare in Edo State and Nigeria. Our inability to respond to COVID-19 scared me of that pandemic.
“COVID-19 caged everybody both rich and poor and the lessons of COVID-19 for me is that we should be able to build our own. We must build our healthcare system.
“Healthcare is not just the hospital or infrastructure you see but the most important thing in the healthcare system are the people who must be able to deliver services to you.
“COVID-19 opened my eyes. The school of nursing closed down, no accreditation, school of health technology was closed down too. How are we therefore employing people working in our hospital?
Obaseki continued, “I brought down Central Hospital and have no regret as we now have 10 primary healthcare centers replacing that and serving the people well now. Go and see what we have done with Oredo Primary Healthcare Center, Amagba, Evbuotubu and other places we are building centres.
“Nigeria has more than 25,000 political wards, and the policy is that there must be one PHCs in every ward so that the sick doesn’t need to travel far to get medical care. We have almost 200 wards in Edo. If you need 10 people in each PHC, how many workers would we require. That’s about 2,000. Where do we train them?
“In Nigeria, we need more than 250,000 healthcare workers from our PHC system.
“To develop any system, the focus must be on the middle level manpower and it’s important to train every other worker in the chain to enable us get quality healthcare.
“An effective primary healthcare center helps detect diseases and safe lives because the disease is treated entirely and will not lead you seeking medical care abroad.
“These students here in this school will be trained to the highest quality because the facilities on this campus is better than the facilities in many universities in Nigeria. Just go round and see for yourself.
“I was here about two days ago to come and inspect the facilities here and saw young students coming into the institution for their academic pursuit, I was almost emotional.”
He continued: “In 2016, when I came in as governor, these young people did not have this opportunity but rather were victims of trafficking and illegal migration and were turned into slaves. The young ones had no hope as nobody cared for them as it was always about politics. When I look around and see the opportunities we are creating for young people, I have no regrets. If there is a need to fight, I will continue to fight for the interest and the betterment of the young people of Edo State.”
On the facilities in the institution, the governor noted, “This campus has free Internet, 24/7 electricity from Ossiomo Power and we have ensured that the selection process is based on merit.
“This project was started a year ago. I wish we had money, we would have started it earlier. People make things happen, not money alone.
“We hired the management of the institution about 6 months ago and they have worked tirelessly to ensure a smooth takeoff of the programme. We are thinking about exchange programme with other institutions like this.”
