Embezzlement at School of Health Technology: A memo to Akwa Ibom State Commissioner for Health
The Honorable Commissioner for Health, Prof Agustine Umoh, welcome to the most complex and sensitive ministry in Akwa Ibom State bureaucratic setting. Most complex and sensitive in the sense that your ministry absolutely impacts and determines the state of health of the citizenry as well as determines, gauges and evaluates the health of all Ibomites. This concerns life and death, no other ministry is so privileged.
Whereas, the celestial determinants are spiritual, the terrestrial determinants are temporal and physical, but there is a symbiotic relationship between the two of which you serve as a direct linkage or channel.
I wish to congratulate you on your worthy appointment as commissioner to superintend over the health realm of our people. This is largely the manifestation of your eternal destiny and a positive reflection of your impressive antecedent in the teaching hospital and elsewhere, needless to mention your professional excellence. We admonish you to follow the path of your successful predecessors who worked hard and tirelessly to elevate the health industry – Dr. Ino-Ekanem, Dr. Ema, Dr. Atti and Dr. Udoikpong. These are your predecessors who made enduring foot prints, whilst impacting positively on the health status of the entire populace during their tenures Strive hard to surpass them all, and posterity shall remember you for good.
The recent event in the School of Health Technology, Etinan and your prompt reaction (though slow), reveals your sense of patriotism, altruism and sense of justice. However, the internal panel of inquiry was dead on arrival. The public opinion is that the Hon. Commissioner, being new and innocent, does not, at the moment, identify all the dragons in the ministry. We urge you to learn fast as you walk the bureaucratic terrain which is quite different from the classroom didactic and rhetoric.
Yes dead on arrival, as at now, the Principal of School of Health Technology, Etinan, together with his cashier, are busy retiring all embezzled monies. Prof., I am sure nothing good will come out of that panel whose membership is of the same ministry. Again, no petitioner will like to appear as long as Mr. David Udo remains in office. He ought to have been suspended even before setting the panel. That is the conventional approach. Let it not be that the Prof. Umoh is playing an ethnic agenda to protect David Udo who hails from Ikono, the same place as the Hon. Commissioner.
Mr. David Udo is boasting that he has the favour of the Hon. Commissioner and that is why, as a term of reference to the panel, the Commissioner directed that all petitioners (including the students of the School of Health Technology, Etinan) must appear before the panel when their Principal is still in office. Hon. Commissioner it goes without saying that no student or petitioner will appear under the circumstances.
Again, it is wrong to allow the Principal of the School of Health Technology, Etinan to continue in office when a panel has been set to investigate his office.
He should either be suspended from office or immediately recalled back to the Ministry to ensure smooth inquiry.
A situation where a civil servant is posted to the school at the whims and caprices of the Directorate of Public Health Services as Principal is suspicious. The Principal performs the functions of the Registrar, Provost and Bursar! This breeds tyranny and as the saying goes “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This is the exact situation in the school drawing petitions from students and stakeholders.
My Hon. Commissioner Sir, let me take advantage of this opportunity to advise you concerning some of your staff members who are not loyal to you. I am concerned by the fact that staff members who handle correspondences to and fro your Office actually sensors your correspondences and file comments and determine which correspondence must or must not be seen by you. Some of the correspondences are lost in transit, some are photocopied and place for sale to third parties in order to subvert your interests. Some files with sensitive documents disappear completely.
Suggestions: reshuffle all clerical staff around you including those in both the open and secret registries. Issue stern warning against further culprits which demands decisive action. I salute you Prof.
Mr. Isaiah Toby, a keen observer of events at the School of Health Technology, Etinan, writes from Uyo- Akwa Ibom State.
