Doctors under the aegis of the Nigerian Medical Association in Osun State on Thursday staged a public protest to press home their demand for stoppage of payment of half salaries to them by the state government.
Some of the protesting doctors, who were dressed in lab coats and branded shirts, marched from the LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, Osogbo to Olaiya and some of the major streets in the state capital.
Singing anti-government songs as they marched through the streets, the doctors also said that there were no drugs nor equipment in state government owned hospitals, despite the claims by the state that it had spent N10 billion to improve the sector.
The Chairman of the NMA in the state, Dr. Tokunbo Olajumoke, who addressed journalists during the protest, blamed the lack of equipment and drugs for the death of former Governor Isiaka Adeleke on April 23.
Olajumoke said Adeleke was not taken to the government hospital very close to his residence, because he knew the hospital lacked drugs and equipment to handle emergency cases.
He said the doctors might consider the option of a strike if the protest failed to achieve the desired result.
The NMA chairman said despite the fact that the state government was paying doctors half salaries, the government was deducting full tax from their “amputated salaries.”
Court jails man three years for stealing phones at UCH
A Magistrates’ Court sitting in Iyaganku, Ibadan has sentenced 43-year-old Segun Akinleye to 36 months in jail for breaking into the University College Hospital ward in Ibadan to steal mobile telephones.
The charge sheet number MI/586c/2016 stated that the convict was arraigned on two counts of stealing and unlawfully entering a ward at the UCH.
The prosecutor, Mr. Salewa Hammed, told the court that the accused person on February 12, 2017, at about 8pm, stole a Galaxy Tab III valued at N65,000 and a Blackberry mobile telephone valued at N50,000.
The prosecutor said that the stolen telephones belonged to a medical doctor, simply identified as Dr. Kalejaye.
According to Hammed, the offences contravened sections 390 and 412 of the Criminal Code Cap 38, Vol. II, Laws of Oyo State of Nigeria 2000.
The accused person, however, pleaded not guilty to the first count, but pleaded guilty to the second charge.
The prosecutor called on three witnesses from the emergency department of the UCH to testify against the accused person. They are Dr. Kalejaye, Dr. Oluwande Olufajo and Dr. David Kolawole.
Kolawole told the court that before the accused person was eventually caught, there had been several cases of stolen telephones in the ward with some of the cases reported at the appropriate quarters.
Kolawole said that the accused person was found at the emergency department of the hospital, where he claimed to have come to charge his phone
In her judgment, the Chief Magistrate, Mrs. Abiola Richard, sentenced the suspect to three years and six month imprisonment with hard labour.
