Letter To Hon. Dr. Rasheed Pelpuo: Where Are The Trained Doctors?

The Wa Central constituency for the past few weeks has been engaged in a popular debate on the brouhaha of 15 allegedly trained medical doctors by the Wa Central MP Hon. Alhaji Rashid Hassan Pelpuo (Ph.D.). Where communicators of the National Democratic Congress as expected are praise-singing his name, his political opponent chastised him for using his 16 years stay in parliament to allegedly trained 15 Doctors i.e. one year; one Doctor. These critique from the opposition NPP tagged him as Doctor do little for not contributing much in uplifting the image of the Wa Central constituency.

Viewing the issues from my perspective as a development consultant and social activist. One would be right to expressed gratitude to the Hon. MP for Wa Central Constituency for giving critical attention to health needs for the people. This is because health has a direct influence on everything as humankind. So to have an MP who sees the need to invest heavenly in training medical doctors deserve commendation.

However, the Wa Municipal Hospital, which used to be the regional hospital before the newly inaugurated hospital have always been lacking medical doctors. The Wa Municipal hospital has only one medical Doctor and so if our MP alleges to have trained 15 Medical Doctors as he campaigned for re-election, he must be interrogated seriously. So the fundamental questions need to be asked;

1. Did the MP spend his share of the common fund in training these 15 Doctors?

2. What form of scholarship package was provided?

3. If yes, why did they refuse to come back and serve the vulnerable people his monies were used in training them?

4. Did the office of the MP sign a bond with these beneficiaries as Medical Doctors?

5. Why did the MP continue to sponsor people to be trained as medical doctors and they end up not coming to serve their people?

We must not allow politicians to continue to throw dust in our eyes. I feel disappointed that these arguments have always been reoccurring, whenever it is election campaign seasons. I am equally worried that the MP for Wa Central Dr. Hassan Rashid Pelpuo lacks the common sense scenario not to have the bounded if they were trained with 'our monies'.

In my candid opinion, these allegedly trained Doctors, must come out to speak to the good people of Wa Central constituency and clear their names or remained silent as we tag them selfish, greed, and wicked souls whore were trained with our resources and failed us in their lifetime.

It is sad to note that, young people celebrate politicians for lips service. Why must my MP claimed to have trained medical Doctors, and yet the whole constituency can only boast of only one medical doctor. We must put politics aside and begin to hold politicians and anybody seeking political office accountable. Let us put emphasis on track records, accountability, development-oriented leadership, honesty and do away with sentiment and parochial interest. The good people of Wa deserve better and propaganda cannot maximize our development needs. It is indeed a pity for ‘a generation when gray hair men would see black and say it is white’ (Pete Edochie, Veteran Nollywood Actor).

Wa Central Constituency Deserves Better!!!

Author; Tahiru Lukman

Email: [email protected]

Position; Youth Activist, Dev’t Consultant & Pan- African Author