Permanent Secretary, State House, Abuja, Jalal Arabi on Thursday confirmed the claim by the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari that the State House Medical Centre lacked equipment.

Mrs Buhari had lamented the poor state of the clinic, stating that she was asked to travel abroad for treatment.

She also called for a probe of funds allocated to the clinic.

This led to the lower legislative chamber creating a committee to probe how the N10.9bn allegedly released to the clinic between 2015 and 2017 was spent.

On Thursday, Arabi confirmed that the clinic was in a bad state.

He dismissed the report that N10.9bn was released to the clinic between 2015 and 2017.

The Permanent Secretary told the committee that the total allocations to the centre in the three years was about N3.5bn.

He put the total monthly wage bill at N65.5m.

“The total personnel working at the State House Medical Centre is 329”, he stated.

Arabi explained further, “Similarly, due to inadequate provisions for the medical centre in 2015 budget, a sum of N481.6m was utilised from Service-Wide interventions to the State House Headquarters for purchase of drugs and other consumables…”

Azeez