Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum, on Wednesday, suspended all the staff of a government hospital in the state for allegedly abandoning their duty posts.
Zulum had paid an unscheduled visit to the General Hospital in Ngala, a town in the Nigeria-Cameroon border when he discovered that the resident doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians manning the facility had abandoned their duty posts.
The governor was said to have become angry that the hospital staff, who were all employees of the state government, had abandoned the facility for an international non-governmental organisation, fhi360, to manage hundreds of patients, the majority of whom are Internally Displaced Persons and residents of Ngala.
Zulum said, “This is a General Hospital belonging to Borno State Government; unfortunately, there is no single state government staff here to attend to all these patients, and we promptly pay all their salaries.
“I am directing the Borno State Hospitals Management Board, if there is any staff on the payroll of this hospital, to immediately suspend all the workers on the government payroll. I will be back to this hospital, hoping to see the opposite of what I saw today.”