By Gift Chapi Odekina
The Senator representing Borno Central Senatorial District, Kassim Shettima, on Wednesday called on the House of Representatives to pass bills that will attract federal government presence in Chibok, Gwoza and other communities in Borno State.
He spoke during a public hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions on 10 bills geared towards establishing new tertiary health institutions in various parts of the country.
Shettima complained that the two federal constituencies of Damboa/Gwoza/Chibok and Askira-Uba/Hawul do not have any federal presence.
The former Borno governor spoke in support of two of the bills to establish a Federal College of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Science in Chibok and to establish a Federal Medical Centre in Gwoza, both in Borno State.
He said, “To the people of Gwoza, Damboa, Chibok, poverty is not a subject of philosophical dispute but the reality of everyday life. The people are conditioned in the furnace of poverty and destitution. There is an incestous relationship bewteen economy and ecology that gave rise to the insecurity that has ravaged the north eastern part of Nigeria. Gwoza and Chibok are by-words for disaster. Chibok is about the most famous community in Borno State.
“We have the moral obligation to make the people have a sense of belonging. There is a need for federal presence in these two communities of Gwoza and Chibok. They are in the heart of what is called the Sambisa Forest. They do not have any medical facilities. For these communities there is some sort of time capsule, trapped by insecurity, destitution and hopelessness. So we have a moral obligation to give hope to the people.
“The beauty of establishing such facilities is that the multiplier effect is unquantifiable. Apart from creating employment opportunities for the local people, the infusion of N2 billion to N3 billion every quarter into the local economy would have a quantum leap in the purchase of the people. New cottage industries would flourish. Before you know it, the depressed economy of those localities would start prospering.” Chairman of the Committee, Hon Pascal Obi, said the hearing was to get inputs that would help to guide operations in tertiary health institutions in the country.
“This public hearing is about granting the opportunity to all members of the public, especially all stakeholders that matter in the health sector and otherwise to create opportunity for them to come and make inputs so at the end of the day, we would have bills that would help to guide operations in our tertiary health institutions in the country, thereby improving lives and wellbeing of Nigerians.
“The primary responsibility of parliamentarians is the making of laws and in the process of making such laws, if we restrict it to only inputs from parliamentarians, by the time you bring it for public consumption, it may be lacking in so many aspects and that is the essence of public hearing, so that everyone that matters would come and make inputs and that is why we are here today in line with our legislative agenda in the 9th assembly, which we christened, ‘Nation building: A Joint Task’. so we are building the nation and it requires a joint effort not just for parliamentarians alone.
“We have about 10 bills, most of them geared towards establishing new tertiary health institutions in several places. Some are universities of medicine and some teaching hospitals and some federal medical centres. About 10 of them. For today we are going to handle about five. The remaining would be taken care of tomorrow,” he said.
