‘Tunde Omotoye

Meet the Nigerian AHS Official Who Staffs Alberta With Nigerian Doctors: Dr. Jane Ojedokun She is the AHS official responsible for recruiting and placing doctors across northern Alberta. We examined every public AHS welcoming statement for new physicians in that zone under her leadership. The pattern is not subtle. Of the 18 doctors she publicly welcomed, 67% received their medical training in Nigeria. That is a higher concentration of Nigerian-trained physicians than all of her predecessors combined since 2015. One of the countrymen she hired, Dr. Tochukwu Gideon Anizoba, who has 3 different graduation years for the same medical diploma, she praised him on behalf of the AHS for his obstetric skills even though he was legally not allowed to practice obstetrics. Is she staffing and overseeing northern hospitals with carefully vetted physicians — or with doctors who have conflicting graduation years and suspension histories? She does not only recruit for AHS, she also recruits for the private clinic she runs with her husband, Dr. Joseph Ojedokun: Life Medical Clinic in Whitecourt. Nearly every physician she has brought into that clinic is a Nigerian-trained foreign medical graduate. The Ojedokuns relocated to Canada in the early 2010s seeking economic vibrancy. In 2018, while she already held public medical authority, she moved to block a competitor. When another private clinic tried to open in Whitecourt, she wrote to town council opposing it. Her words were not mild. “Our community definitely does not deserve sub-quality doctors who have not been properly interviewed and vetted by the North Zone Medical Affairs,” she wrote. “Poor or substandard care is what will ensue if these doctors are allowed to set up a practice in our community.” This is the same official who welcomed a man with three different graduation years for the same diploma. This is the same department that vetted and hired a doctor suspended in South Africa to practise in Beaverlodge, who sent Baby alita home when she was hours away from dying. Town council dismissed her pushback, described her intervention as "self-serving," "socialist," and "protectionist." Was “poor or substandard care” a genuine patient-safety concern? Or was it an argument of convenience against anyone who threatened the clinic she and her husband run? Neither the AHS nor Dr. Ojedokun responded to my media inquiry. If that was the gatekeeping culture she practised in Whitecourt — leveraging patient-safety concerns when they served her private interests — is that now the culture applied across northern Alberta? Baby Alita’s grandfather, Ben Ludwig, put the duty simply. Government is not for business. It is to make sure what is right is done.