Unscheduled visit: Borno Gov. suspends entire hospital staff

By Duku Joel

Borno Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum has ordered the suspension of all medical staff at the Ngala general hospital.

The action of the governor was prompted after an unscheduled visit to the hospital on Monday at about 11am which he discovered has been left in the hands of fhi360, an International governmental organization.

By the governors directives, all staff of the hospital under the employment of Borno State Government ranging from resident medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians at the General Hospital in Ngala stand suspended for dereliction of duty.

Another shocking discovery of the governor was the manner that thousands of residents mostly IDPs had filled out at the hospital with very few medical personale for fhi360 managing them without Borno state medical personel.

“This is a General Hospital belonging to Borno State Government, unfortunately there is no single state Government staff here to attend to all these patients, and we promptly pay all of them salaries.

These humanitarian workers from the iNGO (fhi360) are supposed to complement the state Government staff but not to completely take over the Hospital.

I am directing the Borno State Hospitals Management Board, if there is any staff on the payroll of this Hospital, to immediately suspend all the workers on government payroll. I will be back to this hospital, hoping to see the opposite of what I saw today,” Gov. Zulum declared.

Ngala town is the headquarter of Ngala local government area in central part of Borno state. The border town is within an international land route into Cameroon, Chad, Sudan and Central Africa.

Liberated from Boko Haram’s control in 2015, Ngala is currently populated by thousands of returnees, many of whom are internally displaced persons (IDPs), forced to flee their villages and farmlands in the wake of attacks by Boko Haram. A good number of other residents are indigenes of the town.

In another development, the governor ordered the rehabilitation of three schools in Ngala which were destroyed by Boko Haram insurgents before the resumption of schools closed from the COVID 19 pandemic.

The affected schools include; Government Day Secondary, Gamboru, Gamboru Central Junior Secondary and Primary School and Central Primary School, Gamboru.

“These schools are not habitable. I will direct the ministry of education to put all measures in place for rehabilitation of the schools so students can resume classes” Zulum said.

The Governor directed that local producers and dealers of building materials should be patronized.

“I learnt we have block sellers in this town. Let’s patronise them to encourage local content, but I warn that quality of work must never be compromised local content,” Zulum directed.

Governor Zulum also had a meeting with elders form Logumani and Gajibo where he informed them of his determination and plans to resettle them back to their communities.