How Dr Abubakar Musa rose from resident Doctor to MD, Federal Medical Center, Nguru

By Mohammed Kaka, Bauchi

Dr. Abubakar Musa, the Medical Director of Federal Medical Centre Nguru, Yobe state has given a brief history of his ascension to the apex position of the tertiary health facility.

In an interview with our Corresspondent on Wednesday, Dr. Musa said he sarted as a Resident Doctor in the department of surgery at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital in 1994.

According to him, he came to Federal Medical Center Nguru as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon in 2006.

He said he held the position of the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee of the hospital for 4 years from 2006 to 2010 before the post was re designated to Head of Clinical Services and Training which he held again for another four years period.

Dr. Musa who took over as the Acting Medical Director after the then Medical Director was appointed as Commissioner of Health, Yobe state in 2013, was later appointed the substantive Medical Director in July 2014.

He said that his appointment as the substantive Medical Director was for an initial period of four years which was renewed in 2018, adding that his tenure will end by 4th July, 2022.

“Coincidentally, I reported to work at FMC Nguru also on the 4th of July, 2006, so by the time I am finishing my tenure I would have spent exactly 16 years at the FMC Nguru”, says Dr. Musa.

He said, throughout those years, he has been in the Top Management Committee of the hospital as well as a member of the three Governing Boards within the same period.

“When I came here in 2006, as the second consultant, we had only two consultants and then we had only five permanent Doctors, then the hospital was at a very rudimentary level, we had very few nurses and we were occupying the old site and there wasn’t room for expansion”, he said.

He further said, “Being the deputy to the Medical Director and also heading the clinical services which we know, that is the reason why hospitals are set up so that patients can come and be attended to, I participated and designed a lot of programmes”.

The MD said he participated initiating programmes on how the hospital can scale up services, and in terms of manpower, recruit more staff.

“Because we realized that we had an imbalance, we have had very few clinical staff compared to the non-clinical staff. So, I assisted the then Medical Director in designing a programmes in such a way that we were recruiting annually. I also designed a very robust programme of Locum and Visiting Consultant staff and they were coming to Nguru from all over the country”, Dr. Musa recalled.

According to him, “over a period of 8-9 years, we were recruiting staff commensurate with the level of clinical activities that we were undertaking at each time. We created additional departments and units to scale up services. we sent many clinical and non-clinical staff for training”.

The Medical Director expressed delight that the hospital is currently having not less than 10 consultants who were employed as Medical Officers that have resumed from various trainings and are manning the various departments in the Centre.