angry policemen

The University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital(UMTH) was temporarily thrown into a state of panic Thursday, as policemen who brought corpses of their colleagues killed in Bama to the morgue, went berserk; shooting a medical doctor and beating up some medical staff in the process. They were also alleged to have destroyed medical laboratory equipmenst in the hospital. A staff of the hospital who spoke on condition of anonymity narrated how the incident happened thus: “You know when there is no place to keep corpses, sometimes they are kept on the floor pending when a space is created for refrigerating, but when they came this morning, the mobile policemen went on the rampage and started shooting. They beat up a professor and othermedical staff and also shot a medical doctor before some miltary men in the hospital brought the situation under control.” According to him, the action of the policemenhas made some doctors in the hospital to resolve never to attend to policemen who arebrought in almost on a daily basis for treatment. “The doctors are saying that they deserve some respect from the uniform men because some of the security operatives, particularly the police, have this disrespecting attitude towards them. “Some of these doctors and professor they beat up would have been IGPs if they are in uniforms, but somebody who is far down theladder treats them as nobody,” he explained. Attempts to get the Chief Medical Director, Professor Tahir Othman, to speak on the incident did not yield results. Meanwhile, despite the Borno State Police Commissioner, Yuguda Abdullahi’s visit to UMTH about four hours after the incident, Resident Medical Doctors of the hospital have embarked on an indefinite strike following the shooting of their colleague by policemen. Chairman of Resident Doctors of the institution, Dr. Mohammed Yahaya said; “Our union has from today embarked on an indefinite strike following the attack on one of of our colleagues and others by policemen.”