Ogun government has shut down an illegal nursing institution operating in Ifo local council area of the State.
The school, according to report was running academic programmes without accreditation from the Nursing and Midwives Council of Nigeria.
It was however discovered by officials of the state Nursing and Midwifery Committee in the State’s Ministry of Health during a joint monitoring exercise.
Announcing the shutdown, the Chairman of the State Nursing and Midwifery Committee and Acting Director of Nursing Services, Ministry of Health, Dr. Serifat Aminu, in a statement said the step follows a directive by the Honourable Commissioner for Health and the Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, Dr. Ndagi Al Hassan.
She revealed that the Ministry’s attention was drawn to the illegal institution through an online post on the Ogun State Government’s official X handle, followed by a whistleblower’s email alert to the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, which was promptly relayed to the State authorities within two hours.
Acting on the tip-off, Aminu said that a monitoring team comprising Ministry of Health officials and State Nursing and Midwifery Committee members, mobilised and swung into action to investigate a facility called ‘Universal Public Health Science’ in Ifo council area.
She stated that upon the investigation, the team found that Universal Public Health Science was offering Community Health, Public Health, and Nursing programmes without the required accreditation, stressing that only the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria has the sole statutory responsibility to regulate nursing education across the country.
Aminu revealed that the facility was terribly inadequate for health education, with a three-bedroom flat serving as the administrative block and lecture spaces that were essentially shops with old wooden benches.
“The owner, Mr. Elugbadebo Damilola Peter, did not deny running the programmes, but there is no accreditation from the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, and the Ministry of Health has no record of such approval,” she said.
