The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria’s Assistant Registrar, Henry Okwuokenye, said the council had discovered a fake medical doctor in Gombe.
He told journalists in Gombe on Monday that his employer had reported the fake medical practitioner to the council.
According to Okwuokenye, the council’s committee on medical quackery visited the hospital after receiving the report to verify the accuracy of the information.
Prior to his arrest by police operatives, the fake doctor was providing services to clients in a private hospital in the metropolis, according to an investigation by the council.
“We had a tip-off that someone is working here with documents that are not likely to belong to him,” Okwuokenye said. That is why we brought the director of medical services of the state with us.
“Fortunately, or unfortunately, when we arrived here the doctor was on duty. So, we started some sort of interactions with him and the process given the fact that truly, he (fake doctor) was not the owner of the document.”
Okwuokenye revealed that the council had completed the investigation, stressing that it has the data of all doctors in Nigeria.
“Whether you are trained in Nigeria or outside the country as long as you have to practice here the council will license you to function is part of our mandate. We have robust data for all doctors across the country. We can tell across the country, so we can tell that the document is cloned from another person’s document,” the Assistant Registrar said.
Lamenting on how previous investigations handed to the police had gone unresolved, Okwuokenye said they were going to allow the security operatives to conclude findings, urging private health facilities to do due diligence before recruiting staff.
He added, “For owners of private hospitals: before you recruit a doctor, you must verify the document. We have eyes everywhere in the country. If they must forge documents, they must stay away from medical practice. Removing people like this helps the health sector.”