Ogungbemi
By Gboyega Adeoye/ Editor – in – Chief
For nearly two decades, the people of Itapaji Ekiti in Ajoni Local Council Development Area have measured distance not in kilometers, but in pain. When fever spiked in the night, when a woman went into labour, when a child’s breathing turned shallow, families trekked long roads to Ikole Ekiti in search of orthodox care that should have been at their doorstep. The local health facility stood as a shell, a reminder of promises deferred.
That long wait ends on August 15, 2026.
Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Biodun Oyebanji, will commission a fully renovated and upgraded ultra-modern health centre in Itapaji, a project driven by the Prince Michael Ogungbemi-led administration of Ajoni LCDA. The commissioning, announced on Wednesday from Ayedun Ekiti, marks what residents are already calling the biggest feel of democratic dividends in a generation.
Ogungbemi said the renovation was not an accident of politics but a deliberate effort to bring quality healthcare to rural dwellers and to complement Governor Oyebanji’s drive to ramp up robust medicare across the state.
Since assuming office, his council, he noted, has placed high premium on services that can reduce morbidity and mortality, and on steps that can directly lift life expectancy at the grassroots.
The new centre is more than fresh paint and new roofing. It has been stocked with modern equipment, its maternity unit modernized, and its emergency capacity expanded to handle cases that once meant a desperate rush to the secondary facility in Ikole.
Council officials say the upgrade will ease pressure on state-run hospitals while giving Itapaji people immediate access to treatment for complications that, in the past, claimed lives on the road.
“There was a time when sickness meant debt, distance and fear,” a community elder said quietly this week. “Today, it means walking to a clinic that looks like it belongs in the city.”
Beyond health, the event will carry the imprint of Ogungbemi’s social inclusion agenda. At the commissioning, the council chairman will distribute food palliatives and empower hundreds of residents, a gesture aimed at cushioning economic hardship while the new facility begins work.
Ogungbemi also acknowledged the role of Governor Oyebanji’s administration in granting financial autonomy to local councils, a move he said made it possible to undertake legacy projects that touch lives directly.
For Itapaji, that autonomy translated into millions of naira invested in a building that had been left to decay, and in equipment that now hums with the promise of care.
In Ekiti, where primary healthcare remains the first line of defence against preventable deaths, the Itapaji centre arrives as both infrastructure and relief. It answers a need that has lingered for close to 20 years, and it does so at a time when rural communities across Nigeria are demanding more than speeches.
On Friday, the doors will open. Nurses will attend to patients without sending them away. Mothers will deliver with skilled hands nearby. Children will be treated before a small ailment becomes a big tragedy.
For a community that has carried the weight of neglect for so long, the renovated health centre is not just a building. It is a new era of bliss, delivered at last.
