Mr Ugwu, who is a senior medical officer on Grade Level 13, was found to have impersonated his friend Dr George Daniel, who like him hails from Orukpa in Ogbadibo Local Government Area of Benue State. He allegedly stole the licence from his friend for whom he was best man during a wedding in 2006.
Apparently, Mr Ugwu, who was due to be promoted to an assistant director in the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, has been working in the civil service since 2006 using the name Dr George Davidson Daniel. However, he was recently indicted by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) as an impostor and then arrested by the police last Thursday but was released a few hours later, fuelling speculation that the police might have been compromised.
Earlier this month, Mr Ugwu was arrested sequel to an MCDN which uncovered two Dr Daniels on two separate identity photographs. In a letter to the chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, dated June 4, 2015, signed by the MCDN registrar Dr A Ibrahim, Mr Ugwu was described as an impostor and the case was reported to the police for further investigation and action.
It read: “Records available to the council revealed that this Dr Davidson Daniel George is an impostor as he is impersonating another Dr Davidson Daniel who is the genuine doctor and currently undertakes his residency training in Jos, Plateau State. The council summoned and interacted with the genuine doctor who gave some vital information on the impostor.
“As it is, Mr Martins Ugwu is an impostor. You may therefore wish to take further actions to deal with this matter in accordance with the provisions of the law.”
However, the MDCN said it was dissatisfied with the manner with which the police handled Mr Ugwu’s case and promised to take up the matter with the inspector-general of police. It cited a previous arrest of a fake doctor arraigned for prosecution, insisting that the prosecuting police officers had never called the council’s investigators to court as witnesses.
At the moment, the MDCN is investigating and prosecuting about 40 cases of quack doctors in court. Mr Ugwu was even part of a government committee that met more than 200 volunteers returning from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea where they had gone to help fight ebola under an African Union mission, last week in Abuja.
Linus Awute, the permanent secretary in the ministry of health, fingered Mr Ugwu as the head of a gang scandalising and intimidating heads of agencies under the ministry and extorting money from them. He explained that the impostor had been handed over to the police, noting that the process of his sacking from the civil service had commenced and adding that all the monies he had received as salaries would be recovered.
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