I have watched and followed with keen interest, the events that have unfolded within the Kogi State chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in the last couple of weeks. This was so because I have been a friend of Doctors and an interested party in the generality of their well being and systems for a long time now.
And I have demonstrated my position, just as exemplified in my last news publication in which, I appealed to the government of Kogi State to pay Doctors their complete and deserved emoluments and other arrears without delay, and the government, under His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaha Adoza Bello heeded my appeal and acted properly.
Therefore, I do have certain rights and the responsibility to make known my displeasure and disappointment, together with those of many others out there who became enthused with doctors over the years, on how Doctors as a body, had conducted themselves and their affairs honourably, ethically, and without blemish in the comity of other professions, for allowing distortions and abnormality to creep into their affairs as we have witnessed in Kogi State most recently.
The aforementioned etiquette, decorum, and morality known with Kogi State Doctors, was battered and infact, shattered when they allowed their operational structures within the NMA to be watered down, distorted, and which abnormally paved the way for members like Dr Olusola Baoku, that didn’t have the requisite credentials under the NMA rules & laws, to be cleared to contest in the association’s leadership elections.
The matter at hand, has to do directly with the recent ‘election’ of Doctor Olusola Baoku as the Kogi State Chairman of NMA.
Doctor Baoku, has been a known case of controversy, unfaithfulness, and disloyalty to NMA laws and norms. He typified this attitude when he was the President, Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), Federal Medical Center (FMC) Lokoja by his unfaithful proclivities with the finances of the body. A body affiliated with NMA.
It was on the strength of his indictment for misconducts, that he was disqualified from contesting the Chairmanship of NMA Kogi State some two years ago, by the screening and vetting committee of the body.
The gazetted findings and reports of NMA Kogi State, on the financial improprieties and other irregularities perpetrated by Doctor Olusola Baoku when he was ARD President, and which railroaded him out of contention for Chairmanship of the State NMA in the past, has not been rescinded by any new development or vindication, at the time of my writing this article.
It therefore beats my imaginations and those of countless others, as to how a character like Doctor Baoku, that stands disqualified very very well since the past two years, ‘finds’ his way to the occupancy of an office that only those with moral perpendicularity are allowed to occupy.
This article is meant to draw the attention of the stakeholders of the NMA Kogi State, to as a matter of urgency, look into this fishy, unwholesome, sinister, highly malignant, and image destroying situation, and take the rightful steps to make corrections before it further drags Doctors name through the mud.
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By: Prince Abrahams Ogaji
