The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) has uncovered an Indian Neurosurgeon, Dr Raju Bhuvaneswara, who is practicing in the country without a license.
Consequently, he has been arrested by the police. He was picked up by the Police from Apo Resettlement Division and MDCN’s inspectorate officials led by Dr. Henry Okwuokenye at the Asokoro District Hospital in the Federal Capital Territory.
The ongoing fight against quackery in the medical profession by the MDCN is already yielding fruits as three persons are currently being prosecuted.
The long hand of the law caught up with Basina, 53, while performing a Craniotomy (brain surgery) in an operating theatre.
Dr. Ahmadu Abubakar, the Chief Medical Director of Asokoro Hospital had to prevail on officials of MDCN to allow him finish the surgery before they whisked him away.
Recently, Basina applied for license after many months of practicing at the hospital without obtaining clearance from the MDCN, the regulating agency for doctors and dentists in the country.
Fielding questions from reporters, the Head of Inspectorate Unit of MDCN, Okwuokenye, said the investigations have revealed that Basina had already been working as a Doctor at Asokoro Hospital for many months before eventually applying for a licence in August last year.
“The MDCN is yet to process Basina’s application while response from our counterpart in India’s medical regulating agency is pending.
“We wrote a letter to India to tell us about the status and license of Basina but they are yet to get back to us.
“Although he claimed to have applied, mere application is not a license to practice. When we asked him of a Doctor could practice in India without license, he said No. Why then is he practicing in Nigeria? Time has come for us to sanitize the system, Nigeria is not a banana Republic where anything can happen”, Okwuokenye stated.
Among documents Basina filed in his application are photocopies of credentials from Nazims Institute of Medical Sciences and Rangaraya Medical College.
However, Basina insisted he trained in the United States among other places, but added that getting a practice licence in Nigeria was too long and inconvenient.
