BY VINCENT UJUMADU & ANAYO OKOLI

UMUAHIA—Management of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, NAUTH, Nnewi, has dismissed the purported leadership crisis in the hospital.

This came as the newly inaugurated board of the hospital promised to reposition it to make it a centre of excellence.

NAUTH also dismissed as faceless a group, Concerned Progressives Professionals, CPP, which claimed that there was leadership crisis and called on the public to ignore such claim.

The group had called on President Goodluck Jonathan to resolve the alleged leadership crisis over the appointment of the NAUTH Chief Medical Director, CMD.

But the institution through its Public Relations Officer, Mr. Kris Ngige, dismissed the call, insisting that there was no crisis in the hospital. He said the emergence of the new CMD was through due process.

He alleged that the group was being sponsored by politicians and enemies of the hospital with the aim of causing disaffection in the institution.

Ngige said; “The interesting thing about the call was that those names behind it are non existent and not staff of the institution, the names are pseudo names that cannot be traced in the teaching hospital.

“Secondly, of all the contestants to the office of the CMD, none has complained that the process of selection was faulty so the CPP should be ignored”.

Meanwhile, the newly inaugurated board of the hospital has promised to reposition the hospital to make it a centre of excellence in the country.

Chairman of the board, Prof. Ivara Esu, said at the hospital complex in Nnewi that his board had a clear mandate to look at the policies, finances, staff and general well being of the institution.

He explained that the 13-member board would work to ensure that NAUTH witnessed rapid expansion in infrastructure and man power development, adding that efforts would be intensified for the hospital to move to its permanent site as soon as possible.

He said: “Our objective is to reposition the hospital and improve services to clients and in our catchment areas in such a way that it would be recommended as centre of excellence comparable to any institution in the world.

“We have visited the permanent site at the confluence of Nnewi, Oraifete and Ozubulu,  and because of what we saw on ground, we have set up two committees on project monitoring and service delivery to assist the hospital.