Plateau’s Trauma Centre commissioned by ex-governor is uncompleted, non-functional

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When the then-Governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, established the Riyom General Hospital and Trauma Centre 2004, the location of the facility was widely praised as strategic. The hospital is in Sambak, a community in the Riyom Local Government Area on the accident-prone Riyom-Abuja Highway.

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According to data obtained from the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), 132 crashes occurred in the Riyom-Hawan Kibo-Forest axis of the highway between April and December 2024, in which 54 people died and a further 392 were injured.

However, while the General Hospital section of the facility is functioning, the trauma centre designed to care for road accident victims is not. Former Governor Simon Lalong commissioned the centre in 2023, but the building remains uncompleted. Its raised walls, roofing, and brightly painted structure look beautiful from the outside, but there is no ceiling, flooring, or equipment inside the building. The lone scanner at the centre could not be used due to the lack of power supply. The governor used state funds to commission an incomplete and non-functional centre.

The Chief Medical Director of the State Hospital Management Board, Benjamin Garkuwa, acknowledged that the centre was not in use

“The Trauma Centre is zero; we are working in the general aspect of the hospital. The Trauma Centre has not been furnished. There is nothing inside the structure; the governor knows about this, and discussions are ongoing to put the place into use.” Mr Garkuwa said in an interview with this reporter.

The hospital’s medical superintendent, Francis Fwangje, said, “For the Trauma Centre, we are yet to fully take over because if it will be, there must be more orthopaedic doctors who specialise in that.”

Grand plan, huge budgetary allocations

The Trauma Centre was conceived as a world-class specialist facility to provide care for patients in Plateau State and from Nigeria’s north-central and north-east zones. However, the state government abandoned the project after spending millions of naira on it under different administrations.

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The State Open Contracting Portal revealed that the project was allocated funds in the state’s annual budget by the administrations of Mr Dariye (1999-2007), the state’s first governor in the Fourth Republic, and his successor, Mr Jang.

In the state’s 2014 budget, the administration allocated N176 million for the “Construction of Accident and Emergency Units in Riyom General Hospital.” In 2018, the succeeding administration of Mr Lalong allocated N516 million for the “Supply of medical equipment to Riyom Accident and Emergency Hospital” and in 2020, N240 million for the “Construction of Accident and Emergency Hospital, Riyom.”

However, a staffer of the Budget Department in the State Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, who asked not to be named because they were not permitted to speak to journalists, said although the funds were allocated in the state’s annual budgets, “there were no commiserate releases to carry out the project.”

This reporter’s repeated efforts to obtain information from the relevant government offices on actual funding of the project, including through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, were not successful.

Commissioned but uncompleted

On 18 May 2023, a few days before leaving office, former Governor Lalong commissioned the Trauma Centre.

A resident of Sambak, Iliya Matthew, described the ceremony as “a grand scam.”

An activist, Nankin Bagudu, said he, too, was surprised by the former governor’s action.

“Former Governor Lalong commissioned it, and everybody assumes that it is serving its purpose. Everybody was elated that at least, at last, another government has taken care of that. So, it is a big surprise to me to hear that the centre is not functioning. What happened to the equipment? What happened to all the things that we expected to be there?

“Is it that the equipment has been stolen? It happened in the past when equipment was installed in government facilities, and they were stolen after the governor left. I think it’s something that we need to look into properly.

“That hospital is located at a very strategic place, by the roadside. Many people travel on that road from Yola, Maiduguri, Damaturu, Bauchi, and some parts of Jigawa, so it’s a very important route. I’m very troubled about this information,” Mr. Bagudu said.

Lois Dung from the nearby Tyana community said that until the administration of incumbent Governor Caleb Mutfwang came to the hospital’s rescue recently, there was no activity in the entire hospital. She said residents patronised private hospitals or travelled many kilometres to the Vom Christian Hospital in the Jos South Local Government Area.

A community leader, Shuwa Bature, said, “When the centre was commissioned in the state that you saw it, we were advised to write to the state government that there was still a lot of work left undone. We wrote to the state government that the project shouldn’t have been commissioned. I believe the current administration will look into it and put things in their proper perspective.”

Costly neglect

“Had the hospital functioned, I would have received timely help,” Alice Bala, who had an accident while travelling on the Hawan Kibo expressway in May 2024, lamented. “I lost so much blood and was unconscious by the time I got to JUTH (Jos University Teaching Hospital). Right now, I am still taking treatment at a private trauma hospital at an exorbitant rate.”

Yakubu Dassam, a nurse anaesthetist, noted, “If the trauma centre were active, it would have helped the citizenry, not only in Plateau State but nationwide because that road is a national carrier where people access the North-east, North-central and even part of the North-west and other African countries.

“Hawan Kibo (section of the highway) is like a death trap. A lot of accidents happen around there. You need a hospital close by to give first aid and proper treatment, but you must travel back to Jos or move towards Abuja. So, there is a delay when you are supposed to intervene within the shortest possible time.

“Our roads are not even good. A journey that ought to take two hours takes almost four hours. Even if the trauma centre is functional, between Hawan Kibo and Riyom, one would spend about 45 minutes instead of 10 to 15 minutes. But that would be shorter than coming to Jos or going to Abuja.”

Mr Dassam said the facility could have created employment for the local population. “Employment would have been available to them under the national provision for junior workers to be recruited in (the host community). Now that it is not functional, I do not know whether they have employed enough manpower to give the locality an opportunity for employment for Junior staff.”

Trauma Centre needed – FRSC

The FRSC spokesman, Peter Longsan, spoke on why the facility is desirable in the area. “The essence of the Trauma Centre was to assist crash victims because most times, when a crash occurs, it is either we take the victims to Kaduna State or the nearest place in Plateau State, which is the Vom Christian Hospital in Jos South.

“Imagine the distance from Forest to Gidan Waya in Kaduna or Vom in Jos. The place was to serve as the nearest centre that people could easily access. From Hawan Kibo to the Vom Christian hospital is 64 km; you can imagine the distance.

“To assist, the military established a health outpost along the highway. We also have a health facility at Hawan Kibo so that when the injuries are not too serious, we give first aid there or we take the victims to the Primary Health Centre at Angwan Mailafiya and other places.

“If the crash occurs along the Forest axis, sometimes the victims are taken to either Gidan Waya or Kafanchan, both in Kaduna State. This, too, is over 60 km. If it happens at the Riyom axis, we go to Vom, where, in many cases, they are referred to the Plateau Specialists Hospital or the Jos University Teaching Hospital. The stress impacts on the wellbeing of the victims. We can’t say why the centre is not functioning.”

“We are drawing the government’s attention”

“We are drawing the attention of the government to look into it so that the hospital will be completed,” the Riyom General Hospital superintendent, Mr Fwangje, said.

“We need equipment for orthopaedic services, like internal fixation of the bones, for the operation of the bones, joining the bones together in terms of fracture. We need crutches. We don’t have anything here for a trauma centre.

“When this place was commissioned, I was posted as the doctor here and met nothing on the ground. There’s nothing like an inventory on the side of the trauma centre because even the structure is not completed, but from the outside, you will think everything is furnished.

“We expect that this present government can make an effort to furnish it and make it functional. People go to the Vom Christian hospital, some go down to Plateau Specialists’ Hospital and JUTH, and they patronize the private hospitals around.

“The location of the hospital is very nice, cool, and close. We offer different services, including mortuary, surgeries, diagnostic, and laboratory services. We manage life here. We have some security vanguards, the vigilante; they always help. And then we manage the solar light that we have, but we are looking for water, light, and accommodation. With those, we will improve the services given to the patients.

“We have a staff strength of 70, including the professionals, nurses, lab technicians, pharmacists, laundry, admin staff, records, and Ward attendants, but I am the only doctor here. I am a general practitioner and an anatomist.

“If fully furnished, the Trauma Centre can serve people in Plateau and beyond because many states like Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Borno, Taraba, and others pass this road to Abuja. Nobody determines who will be involved in an accident.”

Why the centre is not functional – Government

The State Commissioner for Health, Cletus Shurkuk, explained why the facility is not offering the expected services.

“When we came on board, the hospital was not functioning. Former Governor Lalong commissioned three hospitals (Riyom, Kanke, and Mubudi), but they were not operational. We have made the place operational. Staff were deployed to the facility. They have started operating, not at the level we want, but there is a significant improvement.”

“For now, it is a General Hospital; the trauma facilities are not there. But we want to make it a part of the orthopaedic hospital, looking at the strategic location of the hospital on the busy Riyom-Gidan Waya-Abuja axis.

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“For any accident on that axis, victims will be rushed there for first aid before they are moved to a higher facility. We have already signed the MOU with the Federal Ministry of Health for an Orthopaedic Hospital presently operating at the temporary site in Jos.

“The permanent site is at Mararaba Jama’a, Jos South LGA. Some equipment, which I may not be able to say now, was purchased by the previous administration for usage. They were to be used to carry out operations. Part of our agenda for the health sector is to ensure that all the healthcare facilities in Plateau State are operating. We have seen where we can also privatise to ensure our people have access to quality health care services.”

The story was supported with funding from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, CJID.