Senate to Screen 7 Ministerial Nominees Today

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The Senate concluded the screening of 41 ministerial nominees yesterday and adjourned till today to conclude the exercise.

Those to be screened today are, Bosun Tijani (Ogun), Dr. Isiak Salako (Ogun), Lola Ade-John (Lagos), Prof. Tahir Mamman (Adamawa), Uba Maigari Ahmadu (Taraba), Festus Keyamo (Delta) and Mariya Mahmoud (Kano).

Senate President Godswill Akpabio, before the adjournment yesterday, narrated how he lost his first grandchild to medical negligence at a federal hospital in 2019.

He stated this during the screening of the ministerial nominee from Lagos State, Dr. Tunji Alausa.

He said, “Just like every other person here, I have been a victim of medical neglect. I lost my first grandchild in 2019, in a federal medical centre. He died through bleeding.

“He was placed on a drip that ran into the night. There was no help, no doctor, no nurse and he bled until he lost over 60 per cent of his blood.”

Akpabio added that the boy eventually went into a coma and efforts to revive him with a defibrillator were unsuccessful because the hospital had not used it (the defibrillator) for years.

He said, “They went to bring a defibrillator to attempt to revive the heart, but it did not work. I said for how long, they said ‘it stopped working eight years ago’.

“I used my hand and struggled with my physician, I could not revive him. I had to close his eyes and put him in the mortuary, and then I proceeded to Port Harcourt for our party’s rally,” Akpabio said.