A revelation on how millions of naira were funnelled into the bank accounts of ghost medical doctors at the Federal Medical Centre, Katsina, is currently tearing the hospital apart.
A forensic audit of 130 medical doctors in the hospital between January and July this year showed that over N8 million were paid into bank accounts of medics who no longer work at the health facility.
And the affected doctors, themselves, have denied receiving any salary since they stopped work at the hospital. As members of the audit committee began pushing for a wholesale audit of the entire hospital – about 1,400 medical and non-medical staff – they began receiving death threats, sending some of them into hiding.
Ghost doctors
Last month, a forensic audit committee was set up by the hospital management in conjunction with the Nigerian Medical Association, the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, and the Association of Resident Doctors to look into the personnel budget of the hospital.
The objective was to ascertain how much fund is available for the approved skipping of a salary grade by doctors, according to Suleiman Usman, a member of the audit committee.
“Along the line, we now discovered that there were some fictitious or ghost names that were still in the personnel budget,” Dr. Usman, the President of the Association of Resident Doctors at the hospital, told PREMIUM TIMES over the phone.
“These are names of doctors that had exited the system either from last year or sometime early this year. But they kept on recurring on the payment vouchers with different account numbers and different banks.
Dr. Usman said on a closer inspection, the committee discovered that the account numbers, although similar, didn’t belong to the people in question.
“One, they had exited the system, two, we had contacted them to get their account details but the monies weren’t getting to them,” he said.
An analysis of the doctors’ pay register showed a continuous channeling of government funds into the bank accounts of ghost doctors.
For the month of January, 2015, five of the doctors received a total of just over N1 million.
All five had left the services of the hospital a year ago.
The same payment was repeated in February.
In March, the three doctors who were paid a total of N626,000 had also left in 2014, after their housemanship.
The pattern in March was repeated in April.
In May, six ghost doctors and an ‘NMA 500 Deduction’ gulped N1.3 million.
A similar pattern was repeated in June.
In July, four doctors who had also finished their housemanship and left were also paid N805,000.
The finding was as shocking to members of the audit committee – most of them doctors – as it was embarrassing to the hospital management.
For instance, Opeyemi Oyewande, who finished his housemanship since March this year continued to be on the payroll until July.
But Dr. Oyewande’s bank details between January and July 2015, which he availed the audit committee, showed that he did not receive the sums listed against his name between April and July. And his December, 2014, salary was paid on August 5, 2015.
Phone calls and text messages to Dr. Oyewande were not responded to.
Threats to life
As members of the audit committee mounted pressure on the hospital management to identify the destination of the diverted funds as well as request relevant heads of departments (non-doctors) to verify salary payrolls; threat messages began arriving.
On Friday, August 28, Bello Suleiman, the Chairman of the Forensic Audit Committee, received a text message on his phone. It reads: “You Dr Bello and Dr Oyeyemi you the problem of this hospital and i swear we are going to finish both of you because what you are doing is too much and wallahi wallahi you see.”
Five days later, it was the turn of Bashir Oyeyemi, the Chairman of MDCAN at the hospital and a member of the audit committee. The first text message – sent from a phone number different from that used for Dr. Suleiman – was sent in two parts. The first one read: “You dr oyeyemi&dr and others you the problems of this hospital you normally enter into work in every corner and you better take time if not we are going to finish you one by one i swear you all about to leave world play and see.” The second part of the message merely said, “you and dr bello.”
On September 7, Dr. Oyeyemi received another text message from the same phone number: “You dr oyeyemi we did forget our mission you must die in this kt we are taking our time.”
PREMIUM TIMES called both phone numbers from which the purported threat messages were sent but the lines were switched off.
After the second threat was issued to the doctors, members of the MDCAN held an emergency general meeting at the hospital where they noted that despite notifying the hospital management after the first threat, no visible steps were taken.
“In fact, management is reported to have dismissed the threat as empty on the premise that such threats are frequently received by members of management and staff,” the doctors noted in a statement issued at the end of the meeting.
In a resolution passed at the meeting, which held on September 7, the MDCAN members announced an immediate indefinite and complete withdrawal of their services until adequate security is provided both at their homes and at work.
They also suspended the activities of the audit committee until every document requested is provided and evidence of security is provided for each committee member.
“Everyone implicated in perpetrating any fraudulent diversion of public funds based on the outcome of the forensic audit committee’s findings must be brought to book and arrested before our members will feel secure to resume the provision of services,” the doctors stated in their resolution.
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