Cross River task force apprehends 84-year-old ‘quack surgeon’

The Cross River State task force on health has apprehended one Mr Simon Okuta Agba, an 84-year-old alleged fake surgeon. This happened following a raid by the task force on his clinic, Life First Clinic, in Ukpah, Bekwarra  Local Government Area  of the state. This was revealed by Dr David Ushie, the Special Adviser to […]

The Cross River State task force on health has apprehended one Mr Simon Okuta Agba, an 84-year-old alleged fake surgeon.

This happened following a raid by the task force on his clinic, Life First Clinic, in Ukpah, Bekwarra  Local Government Area  of the state.

This was revealed by Dr David Ushie, the Special Adviser to the Cross River State Governor on Health who also is the chairman of the task force.

The task force also closed down five illegal health facilities and arrested seven other persons from three other local government areas  in Cross River North, namely Yala, Ogoja and Bekwarra.

Ushie said the fake clinic was raided following reports of suspicious deaths, maiming and even defrauding members of the public of their monies.

He said unsuspecting members of the public were attracted to his clinic because of the ridiculous surgery price regime which Simon and his team have been adopting to lure their victims.

Reeling out his report to journalists, Ushie said, “Investigations show that Simon is not a doctor and  has never gone to a medical school to train as a health personnel; he has no license, has no certificate, and the same is the case with all the staff that work with him. Life First Clinic, Ukpah, is also not registered with the Cross River State Ministry of Health as a health service provider.” 

He said the culprit and others arrested along with him have been arraigned in court by the Department of Public Prosecution.

He said, “On this tour, we met a total of 12 patients on admission. Out of these, 11 of them have had surgeries carried out within 4 days from 31st of December, 2022.

“The only one who didn’t have a surgery was the one who came a few hours before we arrived and he was already booked by Mr Simon Okuta for surgery. So, if we did not go there, he was going to operate on this unsuspecting man.

“We met him conducting surgery on two patients, one a hernia and the other, appendix. These are the diagnoses that he assigns to nearly every patient even as the patients never really get the purported surgery since they adopt skin cuts with suturing while their patients are under anesthesia. The patients wake in the false belief that they had surgery.

“Mr Simon employed other quacks who run sections in his hospital called laboratory who are not laboratory scientists.

“He has sections where they conduct ultra sound scans and the people are not radiographers, not even radiologists.”

The task force chairman also disclosed that they discovered nurses who were also not trained.