10YEARS FAKE MEDICAL DOCTOR ARRESTED BY THE POLICE

Police have arrested a man who had been working in
the federal ministry of health as a doctor for nearly
10 years on a practice licence he allegedly stole from
his friend.
The man, identified as Martins Ugwu, was a top
official of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control
(NCDC), where he has worked since 2006 under the
name of Dr George Davidson Daniel until his arrest
on Thursday in Abuja, officials told Daily Trust.
The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, which
registers all Nigerian doctors and regulates their
practice, called for his arrest after its own
investigations uncovered two Dr Daniels-the same
name on two separate identity photographs.
The council had been petitioned to investigate
complaints against Dr George Davidson Daniel, who
worked at NCDC, but the photo in its database was
not Daniel, the lead investigator told Daily Trust.
“When we looked at our archives, we discovered
there is actually somebody that bears the name Dr
George Davidson Daniel but the picture is not the
same as was sent to us,” said lead investigator Dr
Henry Okwuokenye.
The Daniel under investigation had a photocopy of a
practice licence and a provisional licence-the first
temporary documentation for new doctors valid for
only two years-but the unique folio number matched
the real Dr Daniel on MDCN files.
“The actual person that bears that name is a doctor
doing his residency at teaching hospital in Jos,” said
Okwuokenye.
Daniel, based in Jos, appeared before the council on
invitation, and identified the ‘doctor’ under
investigation as his childhood friend, Martin Ugwu,
and was the best man at his 2006 wedding.
Daniel admitted he had lost his documentation when
both men visited an uncle in Abuja on a job hunt but
did not report it stolen because he thought he had
misplaced them.
He said Ugwu returned the documents a year later,
claiming a Good Samaritan had found them and sent
them back.
Investigators believe Ugwu took on Daniel’s name
and got employment between the times Daniel’s
documents were lost and returned.
Since then, he has being in the federal civil service
for nearly 10 years, worked in the heart of the federal
ministry of health headquarters in Abuja, under the
ministers of health and the head of the NCDC,
beating routine civil-service reviews, verifications and
assessments and taken his most recent promotion in
2010 that’s placed him on a fast-track to director
cadre.
Ugwu was top on a government committee that met
more than 200 contingents returning from Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea where they had volunteered
to help fight Ebola under an African Union mission.
Video footage showed him ushering volunteers off
their plane at 21.38 am on May 24 as the Ethiopian
Airlines flight landed and hurrying them through
interviews and onto buses waiting to take them to
their hotels.
On June 3, when news broke that volunteers were
stopped from checking out because their
accommodation bills had not been paid, Ugwu as
George reportedly turned up at Summit Villa at Life
Camp and placed a call to permanent secretary Linus
Awute who pleaded with hotel management to let the
volunteers go.
‘George’ had to deposit his identity card with the
hotel standing as surety, Premium Times reported on
June 3, the same day he told MDCN investigators
searching for him that he was away on official
assignment in Bayelsa State.
In the lead up to his arrest, he had told AIG Medical,
Dr Grace Okudo that he was in Minna.
On Thursday, he was traced to Summit Villa from
where plainclothes police officers invited him for
questioning at the Apo police division.
On the drive to the station, he phoned his friends
and brother-in-law that he was being arrested.
“They haven’t told me [the reason] but it cannot be
unconnected with the N5 billion fraud I uncovered,”
he said on his call to friends and relatives.
He also called his wife, with whom he has five
children, sent N150,000 for her upkeep and told her:
“I am not calling you to be worried. It is not a big
deal, I’m not a criminal, I didn’t kill anybody. I am
talking to you as your husband. You know what is
on ground right?”
But he calmed when confronted with allegations of
working years while impersonating a registered
doctor.
The council says it is investigating or prosecuting
some 40 cases of quacks in courts so far.