No Registry, No Records, No Accountability: Nigeria’s Failed Medical Regulator The state of Nigeria’s medical licensing system is not just a Nigerian problem. It is a Canadian one. Canada continues to recruit doctors heavily from Nigeria, even though the country has become a known breeding ground for medical fraud — enabled by the near-total absence of a functioning medical regulator. The Nigerian Medical Board claims transparency as one of its core values. Its own website tells a different story: 📌 The page dedicated to its governing council is completely blank. 📌 The section listing quack doctors has not been updated for years. 📌 The page for sanctioned doctors contains no names. 📌 The section meant to track interim suspensions simply reads “soon.” This is the national body responsible for regulating physicians and fighting medical fraud in Nigeria. In practical terms, it barely exists. There is no publicly accessible registry of doctors’ educational records or disciplinary histories. Unlike South Africa or most developed countries, patients have no reliable way to verify whether a Nigerian-trained physician is legitimate, has been suspended, or has ever faced discipline in Nigeria. In this environment of near-total regulatory failure, medical fraud has flourished. The United Kingdom has already confronted what authorities call industrial-scale fraud originating from Nigeria, involving more than 700 healthcare workers who allegedly used proxies to pass qualifying exams. When the problem reaches the medical schools themselves, verification becomes almost impossible. That is the case with the University of Nigeria, Nsukka — the institution "Dr." Ogochukwu Obed Anizoba claims as his medical school. In June 2026, a former Nigerian minister was arrested on allegations of money laundering and certificate forgery. He is charged with submitting a forged degree certificate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. When journalists contacted the university, it falsely confirmed that the minister had graduated. He had not. When a country’s medical regulator provides almost no usable public records, and when its universities have been shown to issue false confirmations of degrees, reliable verification of medical credentials becomes extremely difficult — and in some cases, practically impossible. This is the system that produced the claimed qualifications of "Dr." Ogochukwu Obed Anizoba, the man who examined two-and-a-half-year-old Alita Gerbrandt at Beaverlodge Hospital in northern Alberta and sent her home when she was hours away from dying. A South African verification report later concluded that he never lawfully possessed a primary medical degree from Nigeria — the reason South Africa suspended him in 2012.

The Heartbreaking Moment Esther Discovered Alita Had Passed Away In December 2024, two-and-a-half-year-old Alita Gerbrandt was taken to Beaverlodge Hospital in rural Alberta. Her family believed she needed to be hospitalized as her pneumonia was clearly worsening. Instead, a Nigerian “doctor” — who was later discovered to have been suspended in South Africa, allegedly for fraud and misrepresentation — sent them back home. The family remained deeply uneasy about Alita’s condition. They felt that “Dr.” Ogochukwu Obed Anizoba was not providing the care Alita needed. Determined to get better help, they planned to drive her to the larger hospital in Grande Prairie first thing the next morning. That morning never came. Esther describes the moment she found her daughter unresponsive beside her: “I felt this wetness under her head… Then I saw that she wasn’t moving. It was cold… I picked her up. She was limp.”