Oyo State government has accused the Federal Government of intentionally neglecting Oyo State in the allocation of special funds and resources to states in the fight against COVID-19.
Oyo State Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Dr Wasiu Olatubosun, made the allegation on Monday while receiving an award of excellence on behalf of the state governor, Engr. Seyi Makinde, presented by the Abuja branch of the Music Advertisement Association of Nigeria, MAAN, at his office in Ibadan on Monday.
He said the efforts and success of the battle against COVID-19 in Oyo State was as a result of resourcefulness of the state governor in using the meagre income acccruable to the state.
The commissioner said the state administration had committed over twenty thousand testing kits to community testing alone, adding that the post-COVID-19 health sector would be the best as the present administration had procured over ten ambulances for all the state health facilities among other state-of-the-art equipment that had been procured and distributed to the hospitals.
“It is very disturbing when you realise that the federal government has disbursed a lot of money and resources to Lagos, Ogun, Abuja and some other states while Oyo State is being neglected. Party solidarity should not have come into an important issue like intervention to states on a pandemic like this, it is wrong.
“Oyo State has been doing it all alone, the only testing kits given to the state was too small that it had no significance in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic in the state, thank God for the resourcefulness of the state governor, Engr. Seyi Makinde for looking inward and finding other means of executing many funding in respect to battling the pandemic.
“Only community testing has gulped over 20,000 testing kits, but there is every reason to thank God for our governor and donor agencies, individuals, corporate organisations that have come to the aid of Oyo State, we are grateful.
“The post-COVID-19 health sector era will be blissful as the resources put into equipping all the state-owned health facilities all over the state will now make the sector responsive, the sector will never be same again,” he said.
Earlier in his speech, the chairman of the Abuja branch of MAAN, Mr Fatola Tawab, said the body had seen the efforts of the state government in battling the coronavirus with little or no support from the federal government.
He added that Oyo State had regained the glory of yesteryears as the formal seat of the western region through various landmark projects of the Seyi Makinde-led administration.
