Nigeria Content Online

The crisis rocking the Ladoke Akintola University of
Technology (LAUTECH) has continued as the Medical and Dental Council of
Nigeria directed that the teaching hospital arm of the university
should remain in Osogbo, Osun State.

The university, which is jointly
owned by the Oyo and Osun state governments, became the subject of
controversy following the Oyo State government’s directives that the
joint ownership of the institution should be severed.

The Oyo State
government, earlier in the year, had directed both students and staff
of the teaching hospital in Osogbo to report at a new site located in
Ogbomoso, Oyo State. The Council’s registrar, Dr. A.A. Ibrahim, in a
memo addressed to the provost of the College of Health Sciences
(LAUTECH), rejected any attempt to move the clinical training of
medical students of the teaching hospital to another location outside
Osogbo.

The three-paragraph memo read in part, “The attention of
Council has been drawn to lingering controversies surrounding the
purported movement of the teaching hospital for the clinical training
of your medical students to another location outside the accredited
site Osogbo.

“For the avoidance of doubt, let me restate here that
Council does not recognise any medical training conducted at any
facility not accredited by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.
It will, therefore, be in the interest of your institution to ensure
that laid-down training guidelines are strictly adhered to at all
times.

“I am also to inform you that hosting professional medical
examination in such a facility is null and void and of no effect.
Should Council guidelines be infringed, you will be held responsible
and such an act makes you liable to prosecution before the disciplinary
organ of the Council.”