📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
Twenty-one facilities in one week, eight more the next, a 'surgeon' caught attempting a goitre operation: Rivers State's October 2026 anti-quackery drive
Nigeria's Medical and Dental Council (MDCN) keeps the national register of doctors, but whether a clinic may open at all is a state matter. In Rivers State that is governed by the Facility Registration Law No. 2 of 2019, under which every registered facility must obtain a Certificate of Standards and display it at reception. The state Ministry of Health runs an Anti-Quackery Committee chaired by its Permanent Secretary, Dr Vincent Wachukwu, and October 2026 brought two enforcement rounds in quick succession.
According to ThisDay, Arise News and Pulse Nigeria, Wachukwu told the ministry's third-quarter briefing in Port Harcourt on Monday 5 October that 21 facilities had been sealed, including in Port Harcourt City, Obio/Akpor, Ikwerre and Etche: eight hospitals, five maternity centres and eight diagnostic centres. Three people were arrested. Surveillance reports, he said, had identified more than 150 facilities operating without registration or ministry supervision, and only about a fifth of registered facilities were complying with the mandatory annual inspection and renewal. At Havilla Hospital in Igwuruta a man identified only as Isaac was arrested; Arise reported that he claimed to have trained in medicine in Ukraine in 2013 but held no MDCN licence, and was to be referred to the council. At Ola-Oluwa Medical Centre, also in Igwuruta, Sunday Ogundele was arrested and handed to the police for alleged impersonation after inspectors found he had no training or licence. Kambel Hospital and Golden Era Hospital were sealed because no licensed doctor or nurse was on site.
A week later, Pulse Nigeria reported on 15 October, the ministry sealed another eight facilities: five hospitals, two laboratory centres and an illegal clinic inside a residential compound at 27 Victoria Street. Four people were arrested. Among them, the ministry said, was Ataisi Jephtha, who allegedly posed as a surgeon and was caught attempting a thyroidectomy on a patient, and an alleged accomplice, Mgboawaji Edwin. Wachukwu warned that licensed practitioners who work in unregistered or substandard facilities would also face penalties under MDCN guidelines.
The pattern in both rounds is the same. The facility was never registered, so no inspector had ever asked who was treating patients there, and a claim of foreign medical training was never checked against the MDCN register. By the ministry's own count, the facilities sealed so far are a fraction of the more than 150 it says are operating without registration.
For a patient or a family the check is simple: ask to see the Certificate of Standards at reception, and look up the doctor's name on the MDCN online register before agreeing to any surgery. For a student the lesson is harder. A degree from abroad means nothing in Nigeria until the MDCN has verified it and entered the holder on the register, and anyone offering work in a clinic that skips that step is offering a route to arrest.
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