Nurses under the aegis of University Graduates of Nursing Science Association (UGONSA) have reacted to the video trending on social media, which emanated from the stables of Omega Power Ministries (OPM), where the church was seen parading a group of women in nurses uniform that it claimed were “Nurses and Midwives” it trained, in collaboration with an NGO, within a period of three weeks, in its skills acquisition programme to become nurses and midwives.
In a statement jointly signed by its National President, Chief (Hon.) Solomon E.O. Egwuenu and the National Secretary, Nurse Goodluck I. Nshi, the association described the action of the Omega Power Ministries (OPM) as not just an act of criminality but a crime against humanity.
“While we are not against the OPM running skills acquisition schemes to empower its members, we are strongly against elevating such to a point of criminality and callously endangering people’s lives.

“Going beyond what is legally permissible like skills acquisition in agriculture, businesses, fashion and designing, hair styling, or computer training – to dive into training its members as “quacks” in nursing and midwifery professions, which are statutorily regulated to protect the public, goes beyond the legal and moral decency expected of a place of worship. Such an act of criminality can only be committed by a morally bankrupt and integrity-challenged church run by swindlers disguising as pastors.

“Innocent Nigerians die every day from medico-nursing errors and malpractices committed by quacks such as those paraded as Nurses and Midwives by the OPM and when mischief of their quackery results in deaths or disabilities, news will always misattribute such to nurses. Such ignorant, and most times deliberate and malicious, misattributions have inadvertently casted a negative shadow on the public image and respectability of the noble profession whose members selflessly work round- the-clock to promote health, prevent illnesses, restore health and alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians.

“That OPM criminally crashed a professional course that is run for 5 years in the university, for the first degree, and three years in the schools of Nursing and Midwifery, for diplomas - to a three week skills acquisition programme, and yet the leader of the church has not been arrested by the police for such a grievous crime shows that the country attaches no strong value to human lives and thus is not committed to protecting the public. We implore the Nigerian Police to urgently take a proactive measure to save the public by arresting the church’s leader and his accomplices over this crime against humanity.

“Can fashion and designing that do not involve human lives even be learnt in three weeks, much less the complex professions of nursing and midwifery that handle people’s lives?

“This killer squad churned out by the OPM gave a typical example of how they will murder Nigerians in the speech of its supposed most intelligent trainee when she declared that amniotic fluid is inimical to pregnancy, implying in her confession that she had been trained to murder pregnant women and their babies by rupturing their amniotic membranes to drain amniotic fluids in the criminal guise of working as a midwife to monitor and manage pregnancies. Such is just a tip of the iceberg of the level and manner of havoc that quacks wreck on people’s lives and health.

“ In a saner clime, for criminally constituting itself into another Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN), the statutory regulatory body for nursing education and practice, and murdering the ethics and standard of Nursing and Midwifery practice thereby callously putting human lives in danger, the operating licence of this dungeon of criminality that calls itself Omega Power Ministries (OPM), where one can criminally become a nurse and a midwife in three weeks, would have been withdrawn by the government.

Life is not an ordinary commodity as the OPM and other quack-breeding centres regard it. We enjoin Nigerians to always ask questions on the status and qualifications of any person attending to them as a nurse or a midwife because all that glitters is not gold. Not everyone that dons the nurses’ uniform is a nurse or a midwife. Nurses and midwives have practicing licences issued by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria while quacks, like the killers squad of the OPM, operate without licence- the statement said.