John Silas
The last may not have been heard on the lingering crisis between the Association of Nigerian Private Medical Practitioners (ANPMP) Lagos Chapter and Lagos State Health Facilities Monitoring and Accreditation Agency (HEFAMAA) over monitoring procedures.
The battle to establish an understanding between ANPMP and HEFAMAA hit the rock prompting ANPMP to approach the court for resolution.
ANPMP sued HEFAMAA over misconduct of its Executive Secretary, Dr (Mrs) Abiola Idowu, for slapping a fellow doctor which the former said violates Civil Service rule of Lagos State and so should be removed.
The above set the tone for the legal fireworks, Wednesday, March 9, 2022, when hearing on the interlocutory injunction filed by ANPMP in the court of the Honourable Justice Olatokun of the Ikeja Judicial Division of the High Court of Lagos, commenced.
However, Justice Olatokun has to adjourn the case till April 1, 2022, because the defendants only brought their reply to the application by ANPMP on the day of the hearing, Wednesday, March 9, 2022.
According to the lead Council for the doctors, Abimbola Akeredolu (SAN), she has to request for adjournment because HEFAMAA was only responding to her application on the day of hearing of her motion and she needed to study their response. She said “We filed application for interlocutory injunction since December, Lagos State and HEFAMAA are only just responding today, so that is why we had to take an adjournment, because we need to look at what they have brought, something they have since December, they are just bringing in March, so we have the right and the law allows us seven days to look at any motion. They had over three months to look at our own motion, so we want to look at their motion, then respond to it.”
On the content of her motion before the Honourable Justice Olatokun, she said, “Secretary of HEFAMAA, herself and one other person, went to inspect the laboratory of a hospital owned by a 75 years old Doctor, a member of ANPMP, while they were on the inspection, the old man from experience knows that in order not to forget the things they need to do, he got the manager of the laboratory to be recording so that when the people go they would remember exactly what they need to repair or amend, but the Secretary of HEFAMAA who is a doctor got aggressive and slapped the phone out of the hand of the manager, we have the video and have tendered the video in the flash drive in court. In her counter affidavit now, she is saying she didn’t slap it, she was only paving way, but the video is there for all to see, we will play it in court. So we are saying that her conduct, slapping her fellow colleague, a fellow doctor, and somebody she is inspecting is a violation of the civil service rule of Lagos State, so she should be removed. There are other doctors that can do the job, except there is something special about her which the state has not told us, otherwise she should be removed. From slapping a professional colleague is even wrong professionally and it violates the civil service rule of Lagos State,” Akeredolu stated.
Doctor Makinde Olayinka Akinleola, Chairman, Association of Nigerian Private Medical Practitioners, Lagos State Chapter, on his part said “We are here because we are not happy with the way government especially HEFAMAA is conducting its affairs concerning the monitoring in Lagos. And we feel it is appropriate, we have made entreaties to them, they seem not to want to shift from that hardline, and we feel it is important the court will decide for us.”
Speaking on the adjourned date for the hearing, he said he was satisfied with the adjourned date, “We will continue to look at it, we I know we will still sit down and discuss these things, once they understand us, and we also understand them that is what we have asked the court to determine.”
He said he is confident of victory. “Before we approached the court we had thought of so many other things, all the possibilities, we feel we have a strong case.”
