APC to stage peaceful protest to INEC headquarters

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has announced it will stage a peaceful procession to INEC headquarters in Abuja on Thursday to register its disapproval of the Commission’s string of failures in conducting recent elections, including the Delta Central Senatorial District bye-election and the ‘inconclusive’ Anambra Governorship poll.

In a statement issued by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party vowed to proceed with the march, despite the illegal move by the police to stop it.

”We are doing this as a patriotic service to the nation because INEC as presently constituted is not capable of organizing a free and fair election again in Nigeria. If the Commission is not checked, its incompetence and conniving acts could plunge the country into chaos of unimaginable proportions,” it said.

Anambra supplementary Election: Count us out!

Three major parties which contested the November 16 gubernatorial election in Anambra State yesterday expressed disappoint-ment with the statement by the National Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega that the commission had no sufficient information of alleged malpractices that could led to the cancellation of the entire election.

The parties including the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,  All Progressive Congress, APC and Labour Party, LP, accused the commission of engaging in double speak over the issue, adding that Jega had earlier insisted that INEC lacked the power to cancel the election, wondering why he had turned round to say that the commission had no sufficient evidence to cancel an election he had acknowledged to have been flawed.

Nwoye, Uba and Ngige

Reacting to to Jega’s address, the Interim National Publicity Secretary of APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said, ‘’the APC has rejected yesterday’s  announce-ment by INEC to hold supplementary election in Anambra State on November 30, 2013. We will not be a party to what is obviously a travesty of election by a self-discredited and conniving electoral umpire.

”This announcement has confirmed our worst fears that INEC is working in cahoots with the PDP and the presidency to ensure that no election ever counts in Nigeria.

Also, a Media Aide of Dr Chris Ngige, the APC candidate for the governorship election, Mr Tony Icheku denounced Jega’s position on the matter saying that the APC has no other option than to challenge INEC’s  fraudulent action in the state state.

On his own, the Media Aides to Chief Ifeanyi Ubah, the Labour Party candidate in the election and the Labour Party, Emma Ibeleme and Mr Afam Ilouno, Media Director for the party said, ‘’we stand by our position that the election must be cancelledAlso, the PDP candidate for the election, Mr Tony Nwonye rejected Jega’s re-scheduled election in the state saying that ‘’we stand by our earlier stand that the poll must be cancelled because it was characterised with fraud.

- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/11/anambra-well-part-apc-pdp-lp/#sthash.1hh6AAIu.dpuf

Nov 16th poll: i did not rig Election-Obi

Governor Peter Obi of  Anambra State has denied that neither himself nor his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), rigged the November 16 governorship election in the state, saying it’s actually those who rigged that are shouting the most.

Fielding questions from state House correspondents at the venue of the launch of the third phase of the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN) at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Obi said that APGA as a popular and acceptable party in the state would floor any opposition party any day any time in any election.

He said: “Let me tell you, in the election in Anambra State, I can go to any where as a Christian and tell you there was no issue of rigging.

“Those who wanted to rig were prevented from rigging and they are crying,” he said.

The governor also faulted the calls for the cancellation of the entire elections by the opposition parties, saying, “go to the people of Anambra State, if you repeat that election 10 times, they will never win.

“What are they even talking about cancellation, the regulation, the rules or the law says that you have to win at least 25 per cent in two-third of the local governments.

“In Anambra’s case, it is 14 local governments that make up the two third and only APGA can boast of that because we won in 18 local governments.

“The nearest, which is PDP, won in nine local governments, APC is seven. And I can tell you that even those results they are shouting about, their own are those that are doubtful.

“Everything for APGA is real. I cannot be part of rigging, I don’t have money to pay for people. You know those who spend money and I am not one of them,” he said.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed November 30 for the conduct of supplementary election in the state.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega had openly admitted irregularities in the conduct of the polls and apologised on behalf of the commission.

The supplementary election is to hold this weekend Nov 30th. Lets watch and pray.  

Nov 16th supplementary election: Watch Ngige-Obi's aid

From EMMANUEL UZOR, OnitshaFresh fact has emerged that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in Anambra State, Comrade Tony Nwoye, may join the All Progressives Congress (APC), following some nocturnal meetings between him and the party.A source close to Nwoye’s campaign organisation, who pleaded anonymity, disclosed that Nwoye is on the verge of dumping the PDP for APC where he is slated to contest for the House of Representatives election in 2015.

It was gathered that Nwoye’s move to APC is a result of overtures by Senator Chris Ngige, ahead of the 2015 presidential poll.

“Ngige had been able to convince Nwoye that he was not wanted in PDP by citing events before, during and after the November election,” he stated.

Ngige was reported to have reminded Nwoye how the president refused to raise his hand at the rally, shortly before the election and also how the PDP national leadership had maintained a different position from Nwoye’s on the outcome of the November 16 Anambra election.

OJUKWU UNIVERSITY; Obi's aid slams APC

BY VINCENT UJUMADU

AWKA — THE senior special assistant to Governor Peter Obi on Media & Publicity, Mr. Valentine Obienyem has decried what he called the All Progressives Congress, APC’s, penchant for opposing everything done by a non APC–led government, arguing that it is laughable that a political party should oppose the naming of a university after late Chief Chukwwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.

Reacting to a statement credited to the minority leader in the Anambra State House of Assembly, Mr. Tony Muonagor in which he was quoted as opposing the renaming of Anambra State University after Ojukwu, Obienyem said there should be limits to politicking, even in election season.

He said: “A tragedy happens in Anambra State and even before credible, first hand witnesses could come up with a rep ort, one Lai Mohammed from a Lagos or Abuja base was already pontificating and laying blames on a matter he knows nothing about. That is very indecent and unhealthy.”

According to Obienyem, APC cannot reject what Anambra citizens and Nigerians have hailed as a good gesture from Governor Peter Obi and lamented that the APC was introducing a dangerous species of opposition in Nigerian politics.

He said that when a political party forms the habit of opposing every policy because it emanated from a rival party in government, that opposition is clearly out for the destabilization of the state, recalling that every action taken by the governor to immortalize the late Ojukwu has continued to receive commendation from all quarters, except the APC.

He said further: “I have followed the APC, that is, the South-West ACN bloc of the APC, and noticed the way they revere Yoruba eminent persons, dead or alive. Even recently, late Lt Col Adekunle Fajuyi was honoured. You wonder then why moves by Igbo to honour their own should be opposed and politicized.”

- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/11/obis-aide-slams-apc-ojukwu-varsity/#sthash.wmF5H7un.dpuf

Anambra: APC doubts INEC’s ability to hold fair poll

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has expressed a serious doubt in the ability of INEC to organize a free and fair gubernatorial election in Anambra on Nov. 16th, going by recent developments.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Thursday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the top officials whom INEC plans to send to oversee the election are card-carrying members of the PDP, which has compromised their role as unbiased umpires.

It named the Commissioners as Mr. Lawrence Nwuruku, the National Commissioner of INEC in charge of the South-East, and Mrs. Gladys Nwafor, the second INEC Commissioner from the South-East.

”Mr. Nwuruku was the Chairman of the PDP in Ebonyi State, while Mrs. Nwafor had worked closely with First Lady Patience Jonathan as a grassroots mobilizer. These officials cannot, in all honesty, be expected to be unbiased, because they have been compromised by their antecedents.

”If INEC indeed has any hope of organizing a free, fair and transparent election in Anambra on Nov. 16th, it must immediately shelve the plan to send these highly-partisan and heavily-compromised officials to supervise the election. Any action short of that will open INEC to accusations of bias – which is not what any

UNTH and its open heart surgery feat;

by Tony Edike, Enugu

The University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) Ituku/Ozalla Enugu began in the early 20th century as a general Hospital for Africans built by the colonial administrators.  It later metamorphosed into a General Hospital on the attainment of Nigeria’s independence in the 1960s. However, at the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970, the then government of East Central State transformed it into a Specialist Hospital.

By Decree number 23 of 1974, the Federal Military Government took over the hospital, but left the management in the hands of the Council of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.  The UNTH became independent in July 1976 with the appointment of autonomous Management Board and has remained in that capacity till date and operating under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Health.

Permanent site

The physical constraints at the hospital’s old site in Enugu made it impossible for expansion. Hence, the then Federal Military Government gave approval for the construction of a new complex for the Teaching Hospital at Ituku/Ozalla. Today, the new site of the UNTH  is permanent and fully functional.

All services hitherto rendered at the old site were moved to the permanent site with effect from 8 January, 2007.

The UNTH has broad objectives of service, teaching and research. The hospital achieves these through provision of in – patient and out – patient services through highly trained staff, provision of clinical materials and training as well as equipment for research, provision of teaching facilities for training of students and other persons in the health delivery team and conduct and promotion of research on all matters pertaining to health.

There are nine training schools/programmes in the hospital viz: the School of Nursing, Midwifery, Medical Laboratory Science, Nurse Anesthetists, Community Health Officers programme, Post-Basic Ophthalmic Nursing. Others are Peri – Operative Nursing, Cardiothoracic Nursing and School of Health Information Management.

The movement  to the permanent site was carried out under Dr. Anthony Mbah, the Chief Medical Director (CMD). The hospital encountered many challenges at the permanent site; while some were surmounted, many continued until the incumbent CMD,  Dr. Christopher Amah, took over on May 17, 2011.

Before then, Amah, a pediatric surgeon, had served as Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee, CMAC, of the hospital. The CMD, who completed his second year in office in May this year, recently reviewed the progress so far made by UNTH under his regime.  “I met a hospital that was bankrupt with a huge debt burden bedeviling it due to poor funding, very wide income-expenditure imbalance”, he said.

“In terms of clinical services, delivery was very low both in volume and quality.  A lot of clinical departments had lost accreditation for training of specialists due to lack of essential equipment in those departments. Our radiotherapy equipment, the only one meant to serve the entire South-east and South-south geopolitical zones installed by the Federal Government through VAMED Project, was yet to work  since it was installed in 2006.

Again, an oxygen generating plant installed to make the hospital self sufficient in oxygen supply to the hospital was also not functional. There was nothing like Amenity/Private Ward in the hospital for patients that require such facilities. The hospital’s internal road network was in a state of  dilapidation and disrepair”.

The CMD further disclosed that at the time he took over the management of the hospital, many of the staff unions were on strike and the morale of workers was very low. “Above all, the signature project for which the UNTH was known and  designated a National Centre of Excellence – The Open Heart Surgery, and other sophisticated cardiothoracic surgeries, were abandoned for over 10 years.  In fact, before the hospital relocated to the permanent site at Ituku Ozalla, the Centre of Excellence had packed up.  The attitude of workers to their duties was very poor and this adversely affected the level of service delivery,” he added.

Assumption of office

Amah and his team reviewed the situation and resolved to embark on measures aimed at rebranding the hospital.

The management had to embark on a visit to all departments and units to make the workers buy into its vision of turning around the UNTH.

These efforts paid off as the management has achieved remarkable improvements in many areas even though, according to the CMD, “it is not yet uhuru”. The evidence is the increased turnout of patients in the hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department, General Outpatient Department, Specialists Outpatient Clinics, among others.

The number of daily clinical attendance has more than doubled and the hospital now operates in full capacity and sometimes under pressure especially in the Accident and Emergency Department where there are inadequate bed spaces due to overflow of patients.

Most of the patients accessing services at the hospital come from its catchment areas including the south eastern states and neighbouring states of South-south zone and the Middle Belt. Patients mostly access critical services like cardiothoracic surgery, neurosurgery, pediatric surgery and other rare areas not available in hospitals within the regions.

Amah and his team also rehabilitated most of the internal roads within the UNTH. The roads were asphalted through funds generated internally.

There are also projects funded through capital budgetary appropriation. According to the CMD, these include a two-storey administrative block, building for Open Heart Surgery and other sophisticated cardiothoracic surgeries and medicine. Others are building for Nuclear Medicine and other Ionized Radiation Therapy, building for Schools of Nursing, Midwifery, Post-Basic Nursing programmes among others.

The radiotherapy facility, installed in the hospital since 2007 but never put to use due to vandalisation and other reasons, has now been rehabilitated and put to use; it is the only one available in the South-east and South-south for the treatment of cancers.

The abandoned oxygen generating plant was modernized and put to use.

Open Heart Surgery

This super specialized art, which earned the UNTH the status of National Centre of Excellence in cardiothoracic surgery and medicine some years back, was abandoned for almost 10 years. The Amah administration has now provided a dedicated facility for resumption of open heart surgery.  This was done with internally generated revenue in collaboration with international partners, The VOOM Foundation USA, as well as equipment support from Education Trust Fund, ETF, from the parent University of Nigeria. The UNTH resumed the abandoned open heart surgery in March 2013.

About 25 patients were said to have benefited from open heart surgery conducted by a team of foreign and local health experts at UNTH. Open heart surgery was first conducted in UNTH in 1974 by a team of foreign and local experts led by the late Professor F.A. Udekwu and that was the first ever in Black Sub-Saharan Africa. Many more open heart surgery was done in UNTH including the Kanu Nwankwo Heart Foundation of 2003.

Thereafter it was suspended due largely to the movement of the hospital to its permanent site which had no facility for it until Amah administration broke the jinx in March this year. This was done in line with the Jonathan administration’s quest to stem medical tourism overseas by Nigerians estimated to have gulped N250 billion annually.

The open heart surgery is highly subsidized. For instance, open heart surgery that costs over N2 million overseas, is performed by UNTH at less than N500,000. This has been made possible through the contributions of the hospital’s international collaborators and philanthropy of some well-meaning Nigerians.

An open heart medical mission has been slated for December. In addition to the team from VOOM Foundation, the International Children Heart Foundation is going to launch a Pediatric Open Heart Surgery programme at UNTH, the first of its kind in Nigeria,  Amah disclosed.

Already, VOOM Foundation has done three missions and they were rated as very successful and it has returned Nigeria once again on the list of countries in Africa and the world where open heart surgery  carried out and this is acknowledged as a major effort in curbing medical tourism out of the country.

The Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, who commissioned the Open Heart Surgery/Intensive Care Unit facility at UNTH in March and witnessed one of the surgical operations, was appreciative of the efforts and had pledged government’s support to the hospital.

Testimonies

One of the beneficiaries of the open heart surgery conducted in March, a journalist, Mr. Ihemegbunem Okafor, showered praises on UNTH for the excellent medical services he received and declared that, with the modern sophisticated medical equipment acquired by the hospital, “UNTH is on track as the National Cardiothoracic Center of Excellence.” Okafor, diagnosed to have tumour called myxoma in one of his heart chambers, is one of the 25 patients that had been successfully operated by experts at the hospital.

“I was admitted on March 18, 2013, I had no choice of a ward of residence but I was allocated a suite at the private suites where I stayed till I was discharged on March 27, 2013. While on admission, I was in good hands to the extent that the dieticians took record of my choice of food.  My suite had everything to make me comfortable.  There was a refrigerator, a cable television, an air conditioner and a ceiling fan. The windows and doors had mosquito nettings while there was a standby electric generator that supplied light anytime there was public power failure.

“One week after I was admitted, the doctors confirmed me fit for the operation and, on March 20, 2013 I was wheeled into the ultra modern cardiothoracic theatre. The theatre has the state-of-the art equipment that can compare with the best anywhere in the world. The consultants, doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists and physiotherapists, true and dedicated professionals, successfully carried out an open heart surgery on me on March 20.  After the surgery, I was wheeled into the Thoracic Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The Chief Medical Director, Dr. Christopher Amah, personally congratulated me on my successful surgery.

“At the ICU, I was treated like a new born baby and all the medical personnel handled me with utmost care like a fragile object. The physiotherapists were on hand to teach me how to walk again.  With the help of God, the quality of care and medication I received at the ICU helped me to recover quickly and four days after the surgery, I was moved back to the private suite. The nurses at the private suites celebrated my return to the ward with shouts of Alleluia and praises to God.

- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/11/unth-open-heart-surgery-feat/#sthash.eC6AtYzJ.dpuf