TWO years after receiving N853 million from the COVID-19 Intervention Fund to purchase medical equipment to boost its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the  Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) has yet to upload details of what it procured with the fund to the government's website, according to practice. 

Failure to upload the details, otherwise known as the procurement plan, conflicts with the government's regulations and undermines its transparency initiatives for governance.

The details include what the hospital procured with the money, the contractor(s) that made the procurement(s), the date the hospital took delivery of the items, and other means through which it spent the money. 

Apart from shrouding the procurement plan in secrecy, the action further dents the facility, whose former chief medical director (CMD), Edmund Banwat, had a raging battle with the hospital's governing board after he allegedly awarded a major contract without following due process.

Banwat, a professor, was in charge of the hospital when the government released the COVID-19 fund.

His eight-year tenure ended in December 2021, and an acting CMD, Pokop Bupwatda, a doctor, took over after him.

The ICIR reports that in addition to the N853 million COVID-19 Intervention Fund received by JUTH, the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) supported the facility with N49 million from its share of the fund.

Findings showed that the hospitals procured many devices with the funds. But there were no labels to differentiate them from those purchased with appropriation funds, as seen in other hospitals.

JUTH was among the beneficiaries of nearly N40 billion the government realised through the Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) at the pandemic’s peak in 2020.

CACOVID comprised a group of individuals and corporate organisations that raised funds to support the Nigerian government to improve the nation’s health infrastructures and provide other logistics for fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/how-juth-ignored-procurement-guidelines-over-n853-million-covid-19-fund/

Criminal CMD.
Until the politics of appointment indigenes as key officers in federal government institutions because it's situated in their state is discontinued, discredited and abandoned.
Such FEDERAL institution will continuously be riddled with corruption.