The Chief Medical Director of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Professor Ememabasi Bassey, has given a detailed account of how Economic and Financial Crimes Commission operatives stormed the facility on Tuesday, arrested a professor of cardiothoracic surgery, Eyo Ekpe and four other staff members without a warrant or prior notification to management.
He also revealed that the medical report the operatives came to authenticate was fake, and that persons within the facility may have collaborated with outsiders to produce it.
He disclosed that some persons within the facility may have collaborated with outsiders to produce it.
He said the hospital, which serves millions of citizens across the state, could not afford to remain shut.
“This is a situation that serves as a place of mass resort for millions of citizens of this state. On a daily basis, we would see anything between 600 to 800 patients. We have a bed capacity of almost 600. And right now, due to unforeseen circumstances, we are now in a shutdown. I pray that this situation can be resolved as soon as possible,” he said.
Bassey spoke on Wednesday at a press conference in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, where he gave a detailed account of events that led to a violent confrontation between EFCC operatives and hospital staff.
The confrontation has since forced a shutdown of the facility and triggered an indefinite strike by medical doctors.
“One of the things we need to get to the bottom of is, the lawyer for this person has to, please, the police and EFCC, your job is not over. You need to ask that lawyer how he or she laid his hands on a fake medical report. That means that it is possible there may be actors within this hospital in concert. Because everywhere you have bad eggs,” he said.
He said the hospital’s letterhead had been widely reproduced outside the institution and that the one used in the suspect’s report was an outdated version.
“UUTH letterhead, it is present in every plaza. If you go to every plaza, you will see. There is no letterhead you will not see. We have seen lots of fake medical reports purportedly issued from the hospital, which we have always said are not true. And even that letterhead used is an old letterhead, which means that it did not come from any official quarters of this hospital,” he said.
Despite his allegations, Bassey was careful not to implicate the EFCC as an institution, saying he would not allow one incident to discredit an agency doing important national work.