By Abiodun Abegunde and Catherine Egwuom
The NNPC foundation has inaugurated and handed over three units of 100-bed capacity wards to the management of the National Orthopedic Hospital, Lagos (NOHIL).
The inauguration and handover took place in Lagos on Wednesday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that following the completion of the project, the wards are better equipped to serve patients and fully ready for operations.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd., Bashir Ojulari, said that as an Energy Company of national significance, NNPC Ltd. understood that true value was not measured only in the barrels of oil produced, but in lives impacted.
Ojulari, an Engineer, was represented by the Chief Financial Officer, NNPC Ltd., Mr Segun Adedapo.
He said that was why they had made a deliberate decision to institutionalise their Corporate Social Responsibility through the NNPC Foundation, not as an obligation, but as a strategic commitment to national development and to impacting the lives of their over 200 million stakeholders who are Nigerians.
According to him, the NNPC’s ambition remains unshakeable to ensure measurable and scalable steps as they work in alignment with the Presidential mandate to prioritise production.
“We demonstrated this resolve with the significant 355,000 bpd production by our exploration arm achieved in Q4 2025.
“The company is also taking aggressive investments in the deep offshore; taking gas utilisation and commercialisation beyond the domestic market to sub-regional and global market levels.
“Working through all our value chains from upstream to midstream and downstream we are consciously and deliberately delivering value and will assert our place in the global comity of Energy companies.
“For this 80-year-old facility, NNPC Ltd.’s intervention was targeted at revitalising worn out structures of critical sections of the hospital’s service for patient care.
“Today, we are delivering three wards (G, H and J), fully renovated to best standards, having the capacity to hold 102 patients in an environment whose ambience will in no small measure facilitate better patient care and treatment” he said.
Also, Mrs Sophia Mbakwe, the EVP, Business Services, NNPC Ltd., said that the organisation had made a statement with its social interventions touching lives positively, restoring hope and renewing dignity.
Mbakwe said that in demonstration of the company’s responsiveness, they had strengthened a critical institution that served millions of Nigerians in need of specialised care.
“At NNPC Ltd., we recognise that our responsibility goes beyond energy.
“We are committed to contributing meaningfully to national development and we are ensuring this through strategic corporate social responsibility initiatives and investments.
“NNPC, over the years, has been involved in impacting lives positively across Nigeria – supporting with infrastructural development, such as equipping primary healthcare centres and providing social amenities.
“Now, as a Limited Liability Company, NNPC is set to do more and to ensure the projects we undertake are sustainable and impactful for the benefit of Nigerians,” she said.
Commenting, the MD of NNPC Foundation, Ltd/Gte, Mrs Emmanuella Arukwe, said that NNPC Foundation undertook the project in order to address the deteriorated state of the facilities.
According to her, it is the decision is aimed at rehabilitating and facilitating optimal patient care as well as providing conducive environment for the personnel to perform their daily tasks of attending to the teeming number of patients.
Arukwe said that specifically, they envisioned that the project would break the vicious cycle of health facility challenges to reduce preventable deaths, provide an accessible, equitable and high-quality care to many underserved Nigerians.
“Since inception, the NNPC Foundation has remained focused on delivering need-based, data-driven interventions across healthcare, education, environment, and economic empowerment.
“This project adds to the dossier of the many interventions the NNPC Foundation has delivered across the geopolitical zones in Nigeria.
“Particularly in the area of health initiatives, the NNPC Foundation has delivered free and successful surgeries to over 6,000 Nigerians with cataract condition, including children with congenital blindness.
“The foundation has screened over 4,000 Nigerians for cancer, including children, for childhood cancer, as a means of early detection for early treatment” she said.
The Medical Director of NOHIL, Dr Wakeel Lawal, said the management was constrained by the dire situation of the facilities to write to NNPC Foundation for intervention.
He expressed gratitude to the Management of NNPC Limited for granting the request and delivering an outstanding transformation in bringing the wards to international standards, stressing that what NNPC Limited had done went beyond rehabilitation.
According to him, it represents a renewal of hope. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Vivian Ihechu
