Gov. Zulum Suspends Entire Hospital Staff For Abandoning Patients

The Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum has suspended all resident medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians at the General Hospital in Ngala town, on the government payroll, with immediate effect.

The Governor was said to have paid an unscheduled visit to the hospital on Monday morning, but the entire staff under the government payroll were absent.

They were reported to have abandoned the hospital to humanitarian workers of an international Non-Governmental Organisation, NGO, managing hundreds of patients at the facility, including Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.

On arrival, Zulum was received by the Field Coordinator of the NGO.

AllNews recalls that the Borno Governor had in 2019, paid an unscheduled visit to a hospital in Maiduguri, the state capital, around 1am and did not meet any doctor on duty. He later suspended the absentee doctors.

In February, Zulum visited a school at 6:30 am and met only one teacher on duty. He asked that the teacher be promoted for her dedication to work.

Ngala, which was liberated from insurgents in 2015, is the Headquarters of Ngala Local Government Area with an international land route into Cameroon, Chad, Sudan and Central Africa.

Mallam Isa Gusau, the media aide to the Governor, in a statement said the latest development followed a surprise visit to the hospital by the governor.

To Zulum’s shock, he met only the NGO staff attending to many patients mostly Internally Displaced Persons that besieged the hospital.

“The governor was disappointed to find out that in spite of the high turn-out of patients, not one of the many government paid staff, from doctors down to clerical staff, was at the hospital as at 11am,” Gusau said.

Zulum was quoted as saying: “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,” Gusau quoted Zulum as saying.

While in Ngala, the Governor also visited three schools and ordered the rehabilitation of classrooms destroyed by insurgents.

He also announced plans to resettle displaced persons in neighbouring communities of Logumani and Gajibo.