Etete Peters: A template for administrative excellence RIGHT from the advent of Prof. Etete Peters’ administration as the Chief Medical Director of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, media reports on the institution have taken multifarious dimensions. His leadership model has not only saturated the airwaves, but also filled volumes of newspapers and magazines. The different shades of media opinion on the development strides of Etete Peters are correct; the Chief Medical Director has sired sterling and tangible development programmes in the only Federal health institution in Akwa Ibom State, and the moving spirit behind the great revolution is only but a reference point to future administrators and succeeding generations. The whole of what represents the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital has been dotted with arresting architectural magnum-opus with all aspects of underdevelopment conquered, and the civil service itself re-invigorated in a most unprecedented manner. The list of projects undertaken by Peters are so phenomenal, the infrastructural development spell-binding, while the whole of the institution has been dotted with arteries of roads. The staff now have a future, and exude the kind of self-confidence that was always lacking in public institutions when people used to feel that their job was not secured because such institutions could fold up at anytime due to poor management. Life has been injected into the healthcare; the patients now smile to the hospital, and back home thrilled by the kind of services and treatments they receive in the hospital, courtesy of this single individual who has transformed the place to a one-stop healthcare provider. The recent visit of the Minister of State for Health, Dr. Muhammed Ali Pate, for a forum on prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV and AIDS provided an auspicious opportunity for public appraisal of the enigmatic personality of Prof. Peters, defineable at the levels of administrative sagacity, intellectual candour, characteristic leadership, social engineering and the progressive tilt that seems to grace his credentials. Dr. Ali Pate said after inspecting the achievements in the teaching hospital, that government can save more than 500 lives by paying more attention to the expansion of health services and also, that the country should not apply theoretical solution to practical things as proper information is key to knowledge. But despite the giant strides of this medical icon, one of the challenges confronting the hospital is inadequate funding. According to an anonymous staff : “If the hospital is well funded, it will go a long way to assist the hospital acquire more modern diagnostic equipment which will drastically reduce the exodus of elite to foreign nations for medical care, and improve the quality of health care provided to patients. Prof. Peters, a trained medical doctor, astute administrator, and a statesman was born in Ikot Ekpaw, in Mkpat Enin Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State to a humble family. Although, he grew up in this unknown part of the world but gradually he crept into the world of the famous. It is safe to assume that hundreds of millions of the nation’s budget is appropriated to the health sector; on average half of such budget provisions released to the health institutions are lost to the elite through excessive greed in appropriation of the national resources to themselves. This simple assumption considers that, firstly, it took years of unpatriotic administrations for the health institutions to decay to their pitiable levels, and two that accessibility to quality services were largely dependent on the patriotic instincts of the administrators of the institutions. Yet, in the case of Peters, there is no doubt that he belongs to the new and emerging brigade of Nigerians who are not afraid to enthrone young and brilliant people at the apogee of classical leadership around the world. The University Teaching Hospital in the period of its existence has an overlapping history of a list of Chief Medical Directors who would be remembered differently. The result of their comparative analysis is that the contributions and achievements of the young Prof. Peters is 12 times larger. The staff have also spoken, and their rating is not different. With goodwill, none of them amounts to discrimination, let alone persecution. For his colleagues, it is not how successful, but how effectively successful is what ranks the Peters’ administration the highest. Some of the outstanding achievements recorded again by the administration of Prof. Peters is the installation of a Toshiba 16 multi slice C- T Scanner in the Radiology Department, putting the University Teaching Hospital in the league of centres possessing the technology wonder tool expected to redefine and reshape medical diagnosis in this part of the country. The commissioning of the Diana-Abasi Orthopedic Theatre by the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, is another plus. The Governor during the visit found out that Peters’ achievements were awesome by almost any other standard. Considered a reformer, it was again like his predecessors only managed modest tweaks based on the biggest overhaul the Teaching Hospital, under Peters, has undergone. He seems to have been uniquely licenced to harangue the staff on the details of delivery. Mr. TONY NYONG, a journalist, wrote from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 02:21:44 +0000
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