By Nwafor Okafor
The Anambra State Government has commenced the registration of native doctors and allied practitioners in the state to sanitise the sector.
The state’s Commissioner for Information, Paul Nwosu, who disclosed this tojournalists in Awka , the Anambra State capital on Wednesday , said the decisionwas part of the resolutions reached at the Anambra State Executive Council(AN SEC) Meeting, held at Government House on Tuesday.
He said the development followed a discovery that some of the native doctors were aiding criminals(unknown gunmen) in the state by providing them with assorted charms.
Nwosu said “having discovered that some native doctors provide charms with which gunmen operate, it has become necessary to enumerate and register them as practitioners, categorised into herbalists and spiritualists.
“While government appreciates the fact that some of them add value to health care, it is also not unaware that they have helped to imbue these criminals with the dare-devil confidence that has driven them into committing despicable crimes as kidnapping, extortion of ransom, beheading, etc. Where they are found culpable in such crimes, it will be easy to fish them out from the register”.
The Commissioner also announced plans by the state government to extend the removal of illegal structures defacing the environment and endangering lives beyond Onitsha in the coming weeks.
He said, “It has come to the attention of ANSEC that the lands of many community secondary and primary schools have been massively encroached on by some communities and developers.
“This is unacceptable and government is seriously looking to recover these portions of land; part of measures to achieve this within the ambits of the law, government is seeking to quickly amend land laws so that land grabbing will be criminalised.”
The Commissioner further said that as a responsive government, ANSEC had set up a committee to review payment claims by contractors of the previous administration to ascertain if the contracts were awarded in line with due process, if they were completed or not, among others before payments would be considered.
He said members of the committee include: Finance Commissioner as Chairman of the Committee, Accountant General, Department of Public Procurement, General Manager, Commissioners for Works, Housing and Power, adding that they had till September to complete their work.
He said at the ANSEC meeting, a revenue committee was constituted, comprising the Chairman of Anambra Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Richard Madiebo, Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Dr. Obinna Ngonadi, Special Adviser, Medicals and Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Godwin Nnadozie as well as Managing Director, Information Communication Technology Agency, Mr Chukwuemeka Agbata.
The Commissioner said the committee’s responsibility was to disaggregate the various revenue waste management through the demand notices issued in order to determine where greater effort would be channeled.
He said ANSEC also resolved that following the last teachers’ Computer Based Test, a total of 6,250 candidates had been shortlisted; 3,250 for Primary School and 3,000 for Secondary School; stressing that the oral interviews had been scheduled to commence on the 27th of July, 2022 and would last for two weeks, adding “The interviews which will come in batches will hold at Igwebuike Grammar School Awka; St John of God Secondary School, Awka and ASUBEB, Awka”.
Nwosu said, “Highpoint of the ANSEC meeting was presentation of a souvenir from the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, His Excellency, Cui Jianchun to Governor Chukwuma Soludo, through the Commissioner for Culture, Entertainment and Tourism, Chief Don Onyenji. The souvenir serves as a token of friendship in preparation for the envoy’s visit to Anambra state later in October when the plan to set up a Cultural Centre in the state would be concluded.”
