In a nation where many doctors graduate and are pounding the streets for good jobs or any job at all, it is unnerving to find a man who has pretended to be a doctor in the core ministry for doctors, the Federal Ministry of Health, in all of nine years.
To be a doctor is not a day’s job; to be a good doctor is even more challenging with all the shortfalls in the society: no equipment, not enough facilities, not enough inspiration to do good and the attendant backbreaking work while just trying to do an honest day’s job.
Studying to be a doctor takes a long time because you need first of all to understand human anatomy, then draw from your understanding to study the interaction of each body part with the other with the knowledge of the dynamics of vital organs – the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the brain, et cetera. Learning the intricate functions of all of these and how one part affects the other is as hard as it is admirable. A lot of would-be doctors take flight once they sight blood, while others cannot manage the study of cadavers. After all of these, they then specialise as doctors of certain parts of the body – neurosurgery, dentistry, oncology, et cetera.
My doctors are my friends; I trust them because they know my body and help me to look after it. They give me the best advice and keep me safe and sane.
While recognising that there are many quack doctors across the world, the incredible bravery of one in his bid to defraud Nigerians and the Federal Government is unprecedented. Of course, we have heard severally of fake doctors whose sole aim is to make money performing surgeries with knives and butchering patients to death. Others have sold drugs in pharmacies and have relocated to their local government areas calling themselves doctors and earning the confidence of their kith and kin. These quack doctors abound but as I said, the bravery and amazing deceit of one fake doctor right in the heart of the Ministry of Health for all of nine years has to take the cake in fake doctoring.
As a writer, this seems to me like a subject for a blockbuster movie or a fictional tale that should become a bestseller. Enter Martins Ugwu Okpe who spent nine years pretending to be one. I have mulled the story in my head in the last three weeks since it broke and asked myself repeatedly: what manner of man takes his friend’s MBBS certificate, re-invents himself and takes the cheat’s way out of earning a doctor’s qualification? Rising through the ranks with another person’s certificate and claiming to be what you are not for nine years is an amazing feat in criminal intelligence. He sat amongst real doctors, contributed to policy, took decisions that affected the lives of others and even pointed accusing fingers at others for wrongdoing during his glorious nine-year reign in the Federal Ministry of Health, the hallowed chamber of decision making on health matters.
How is it possible that he got away for so long? Who processed him as a staff from the beginning? Who was the admin officer in the Ministry of Health who registered him when he arrived? Who hired him into the ministry or was it man knows man (“I ma mmadu”, as the Igbos would say)? Were there no periodic checks of papers? Were there no identity parades, checks, that could have ousted him before now? No one was curious enough among doctors to ask how two doctors in two different cities could have such similar names. What about the NMA? Do they not share information, have meetings?
This man is married with children. Did he deceive his wife when he married her? Was there nothing clunky about the way he was referred to in his village and the name he now bears? Did he not have classmates in medical school? Where are they?
The interesting part is that in plotting this whole nine-year debacle, his friend whose certificate he stole, who is himself a practicing doctor in Jos, is said not to have been aware of this identity theft. Is this possible and if it is, can we all see how at risk his friend was? If I take your certificate, I might want to get rid of you so I remain the last man standing.
This fake doctor got so comfortable that he became a force to be reckoned with in the Ministry of Health and carefully avoided working in the hospitals where his gaps would have been apparent. So he spent time on task forces, travels, logistics, disease control. The man probably even got promoted ahead of real doctors.
Kudos to all those security operatives who found him out. Let’s not rest on our oars. There are many more frauds in our systems, cheating the people, short-changing the system, putting us all at risk. God help us!
Eugenia Abu
