Six years as a 'doctor' in Suleja after dropping out of medical school: Niger State seals Ellamara Specialist Hospital and 14 other clinics, June 2026

Nigeria regulates private clinics state by state. In Niger State the Niger State Private Health Facilities Agency (NiSPHFA) licenses and inspects private hospitals, and its task force can seal a facility on the spot. Its executive chairman, Dr Abdullahi Suleiman, used that power in Suleja, the commuter town on the edge of Abuja, in June 2026.

According to reports by Peoples Gazette and Prime Post, both based on a News Agency of Nigeria dispatch of 14 June 2026, Suleiman spoke to reporters during an inspection in Suleja on Saturday 13 June after the agency's task force had visited selected private health facilities. Fifteen facilities were shut for infractions including failure to meet operational standards and non-compliance with licensing requirements. At one of them, Ellamara Specialist Hospital, the task force found a man allegedly presenting himself as a medical doctor and providing medical services without the required qualifications, professional registration or a valid practising licence. The hospital was sealed pending investigations and the man was handed to security agencies for further investigation and possible prosecution.

Suleiman gave an account of the suspect's history. Preliminary investigations, he said, indicated that the man had dropped out of medical school and had practised as a doctor in Suleja for about six years. A former employer had reportedly disengaged him over credential issues, and he had reportedly been arrested in Cross River State in the past for a similar offence. The operation, the agency said, followed intelligence reports and routine regulatory inspections. Suleiman warned owners of private facilities against employing unqualified staff and urged the public to report suspicious healthcare practices. Facts.ng, crediting Punch, carried the same headline figures.

What stands out is the length of the run. A man who, according to the regulator, never finished medical school was able to move between employers for around six years, including after one employer had already let him go over his credentials and after a previous arrest in another state. Nothing in the accounts suggests that any hospital which hired him asked the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria to confirm a registration number, the one check that would have ended the career on day one.

For hospital owners the lesson is that a dismissal for bad papers must be reported, not quietly absorbed, because the next employer inherits the problem. For patients in a private clinic, ask for the doctor's MDCN folio number and check it online. For students, note that a few years of medical school without a degree gives no right to practise anywhere, and that employers who do not ask for proof are exactly the employers the regulator is now closing down.