Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun has said that his administration is considering putting in place health insurance scheme that would enable the people have access to affordable and quality healthcare services in the state.

He stated this when he received in his office at Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, management team of Stanbic IBTC Holdings, who paid him a courtesy visit.

Abiodun said that the scheme would enable the less privileged in the society have access to quality healthcare without paying much for it.

According to him: “We want to instil the culture of health insurance so that it will help in paying for healthcare.“A couple of states are doing something that is interesting that we are trying to study. But we want to ensure that we start with civil servants, co-operatives, market associations, among others.“They will pay stipends while we give them cards that will show that they can go to primary health centres and do not have to pay anything and even when they are referred to the tertiary health facilities, they do not have to pay anything.

“That should help us fund social services better. We are investing in primary health centres and tertiary health facilities as well.”The governor, who intimated the guests of his administration’s programmes, said that 236 primary schools across the state were being rehabilitated since the basic school is the foundation with which other levels are built upon.

“Education is our pride, we must maintain our position which used to be number one in education in this country. You will recall that this is the birthplace of free education. This state has the highest number of universities, secondary schools. We probably have the highest number of pupils in primary schools as well,” he said.

Abiodun said that his government had put in place machinery to provide adequate security, while it was also leveraging on the Central Bank of Nigeria intervention programmes, such as the Anchor’s Borrowers Programme, to positively engage the youths and unemployed, as well as explore Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in repositioning the education sector.

The Group Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings, Mr. Yinka Sanni, who spoke earlier, said his organisation was already partnering with the government in the health sector as part of their Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR).

“We are ready to partner with government in the health sector as part of our corporate social responsibilities. We focus on three areas of health, education and empowerment.“We are looking at the possibility of adopting some primary health centres, especially those that are located near where we do business. We see to that as a way of partnering with those that accommodate us to do business. We are willing to do that and we are excited about it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Ogun State government has commenced the second phase of the state primary school teachers’ recruitment exercise.A statement by the Chief Press Secretary to the state government, Kunle Somorin, said that once applicants have confirmed the status of their submitted application, they should follow all prompts and instructions accordingly.The statement said that the deadline for the submission of the form in this phase is tomorrow, November 19, 2019.