The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL has hailed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, for handing over a hospital with medical equipment worth about $2.15m, which was seized from a former Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu (retd.) to the Nigerian Air Force medical unit.
DAILY POST reports that that the anti-graft agency had asked the Air Force to take over the St. Solomon Hospital, which is located on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos.
The hospital is said to have very expensive equipment, including a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine which costs well over $1m have been handed over to the Air force pending the outcome of Amosu’s trial. It is assumed that the money used in buying the hospital was stolen from the air force.
Other properties seized from Amosu included a house on Adeyemo Alakija Street, GRA Ikeja worth N250m; a duplex at House 11, Peace Court Estate, GRA Ikeja worth N110m; a N40m property located at NAF Harmony Estate, Asokoro base; a five-bedroomed house at Valley NAF Estate, Port Harcourt, worth N33m and a N95m house on Umaru Dikko Street, Jabi. The Federal Government has also commenced moves to seize Amosu’s house at 50 Tenterden Grove, NW41TH, London worth about £2m.
Reacting to the development, Executive Chairman of CACOL, Mr. Debo Adeniran, said the decision and many more like this would go a long way in helping the health sector in coping with challenges of infrastructural deficiencies.
He said “seeing that the EFCC had decided to tread this path gives us hope of winning the war against corruption to achieve positive impacts on the people. It has always been our position at CACOL that whatever money/property recovered from looters should be re-channeled back to the original project the looted funds/property were meant for. If funds meant for a particular project that gets diverted, once such fund is recovered by any anti-corruption agency, such monies should be used to fund the project that was made un-actualizeable as a result of looting.”
He said “one major aftermath of corruption in the country is an epileptic economy. Once the funds allocated to a project get been pillaged, fresh funds are often released for such abandoned project. This has consistently over time landed us in the pitfalls of economic disasters.”
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