In one year, the UK Medical Tribunal sanctioned 16 Nigerian doctors for fraud, rape, theft, others

At least 16 Nigerians working as medical professionals in the United Kingdom have either been suspended or struck off the medical register within the last 12 months, PREMIUM TIMES can report. They were sanctioned for crimes ranging from rape to theft, fraud, illegal possession of drugs and unauthorised practice.

The sanctions were imposed by the UK Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), often after a hearing or series of hearings.

The MPTS is an adjudication body that conducts hearings and makes decisions on the fitness to practise of doctors referred by the regulatory General Medical Council (GMC).

A review of tribunal records released on the MPTS website showed that between July 2025 and July 2026, over a dozen Nigerians were referred by the GMC to the tribunal for different offences. The outcome of the proceedings was mostly suspension. Out of the 18 Nigerians, 10 were suspended. One was let off with a warning. However, at least three others had their names struck off the kingdom’s medical register.

A Nigerian named Olubunmi Adeagbo-Sheikh is one of those removed from the register. He was removed in September 2025 over a criminal conviction for benefit fraud.

According to the MPTS records, Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh fraudulently received £11,000 in Universal Credit from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) between September 2018 and September 2019, using a fake tenancy agreement.

He had received his primary medical training at Igbinedion University, Edo State, and once worked as a gastroenterologist at Orpington Hospital in London.

Documents reviewed by PREMIUM TIMES showed that in August 2018, Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh submitted an application for Universal Credit, a social security benefit for unemployed or low-income earners, which included a claim for £900 per month in rent. He had not yet registered as a doctor with the GMC at this time.

Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh then provided a fake address for the house and forged a tenancy agreement to support his claim. The doctor received the requested housing cost for 13 months after his application was approved.

The police found WhatsApp chats on the benefit scam, copies of the forged tenancy agreement, and a fake CV on his device following his arrest in October 2019. He was subsequently charged to court, where he pleaded guilty and was “sentenced to a 12-month Community Order with 100 hours (4 days) of unpaid work.”

Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh did not notify the GMC of his conviction until after seven weeks, an action the tribunal qualified as misconduct.

At the hearing held in September 2025, MPTS concluded that Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh’s action was “fraud from start to finish” and a violation of the Good Medical Practice (GMP) standards.

It “rejected the out-of-hand assertion by Adeagbo-Sheikh that it was his intention to stop claiming benefits when he started work.”

The tribunal “was of the view, having seen and heard oral evidence from Dr Adeagbo-Sheikh, that he would likely not have stopped voluntarily and not until he was found out. Adeagbo-Sheikh’s character at the time was that he was willing to be dishonest,” the document read.

The MPTS also felt it was too early to say there was no risk of him repeating such dishonest actions. Although Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh had taken steps toward remediation—such as repaying the money and completing community service—the tribunal ruled that he lacked “full insight” into his behaviour because much of his reflection was recent and he had used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate the reports and testimonials he submitted to the council.

The tribunal did not accept Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh’s evidence that his own work amounted to 85 per cent. This was a figure plucked out of the air, it said. In the tribunal’s view, about “five and a half pages of this document are likely to have been written by Mr Adeagbo-Sheikh, but not the remaining 16 and a half pages, which would appear to have been written with AI support.”

The tribunal ruled that his “premeditated and persistent dishonesty” meant he could no longer remain registered as a doctor. The MPTS ruled that his name be removed from the UK Medical Register.

Erasure for Rape

Between September and October 2025, the tribunal erased the names of two Nigerians from its medical register for rape and unauthorised practice, including “performing an HRT surgery.”

Both of them had been practising in the kingdom for over a decade. Aloaye Foy-Yamah, a graduate of the University of Benin, practised as a gynaecologist in England for more than 14 years before he was sanctioned by the tribunal for rape.

Records on Mr Foy-Yamah’s hearing show that the tribunal found that he had raped a woman. The tribunal considered him a risk to women if allowed to continue his career. It was directed that his name be struck off the medical register based on this concern. This hearing was held in May 2026.

The incident, according to documents reviewed by this paper, occurred in mid-November 2018, at Mr Foyamah’s residence. The victim, identified as “Ms A”, was visiting him at his home for a week-long stay.

The tribunal heard that although Ms A rejected his advances when he first made them, he would eventually force himself on her. It ruled that Mr Foy-Yamah had sexually propositioned and assaulted Ms A during that visit.

The case was previously investigated by Lancashire Police, but no criminal charges were brought. In March 2025, however, an independent panel investigated the case and ruled that on the “balance of probabilities”, the doctor was most definitely guilty of rape. However, Mr Foy-Yamah had his licence suspended for only 12 months in March 2025 on the grounds that it had been a “one-off” incident.

Then the GMC appealed against that decision to the new tribunal, which ruled in May 2026 that Mr Foy-Yamah posed a risk to women and had to be struck off the medical register.

Erasure for unlicensed practice

A Nigerian gynaecologist who, according to MPTS records, obtained his primary medical training from the University of Ibadan in Oyo State, was also struck off the register by the tribunal in 2025.

Joseph Onwude was erased following findings of persistent dishonesty, unauthorised practice, and a criminal conviction for pretending to be licensed.

Documents reviewed by PREMIUM TIMES showed that the GMC withdrew his licence in 2021 after failing to submit mandatory returns. But Mr Onwude continued to operate a private practice despite having no license.

In March and April 2022, Mr Onwude gave private prescriptions to two patients and surgically inserted an HRT implant into a third patient at a clinic in Badwell Ash in Suffolk, England.

He also emailed one of the patients, referring to HRT medication as “smarties,” a language that displeased the patient. The GMC also considered the language inappropriate because it trivialised the serious risks and benefits of HRT.

The GMC Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT) imposed an “order of suspension” on Mr Onwude’s registration in August that same year. But Mr Onwude continued practising, according to records reviewed in this paper. Three months after the IOT order, Mr Onwude issued a private prescription for Vagifem to a patient.

“When that prescription was refused by a pharmacist at Well Pharmacy in Brentwood, Mr Onwude told the patient he was entitled to prescribe and suggested taking the prescription elsewhere,” the document read.

Mr Onwude’s conduct was considered “dishonest.”

In March 2024, a Suffolk Magistrate Court convicted him. But Mr Onwude, unwilling to accept this judgment, appealed the conviction to the Ipswich Crown Court. However, the court dismissed his appeal. It ordered him to pay the patient, on whom the unlicensed HRT surgery was performed, £1,200 in compensation and imposed a £180 fine.

Then, in August 2025, the MPTS began conducting hearings into Mr Onwude’s misconduct and criminal conviction and found that his fitness to practice was impaired.

In September, the tribunal ordered that Mr Onwude’s name be erased from the medical register. It also imposed an immediate suspension on his registration.

Nigeria’s professional medical standards

All doctors who work in the UK are required to be registered with the GMC and to comply with the GMC’s professional standards. Violations lead to a fitness-to-practice investigation.

At the end of the investigation, GMC case examiners either consider the case or refer it to the MPTS.

The MPTS held at least 185 new hearings in 2024 and 238 new hearings in 2025, according to its official annual reports. PREMIUM TIMES found that between July 2025 and July 2026, the tribunal held around 260 hearings. A majority of the hearings did not involve Nigerians. However, this paper found that the tribunal heard at least one case involving a Nigerian each month during this period, except in January.

The UK is the leading destination for Nigerian health workers. In 2024, the UK National Health Service (NHS) identified Nigerians as one of its five largest employee groups. Over 5,600 doctors have moved from Nigeria to the UK in the last decade despite Nigeria’s health care sector facing a doctor-to-patient ratio more than five times worse than the WHO recommendation.

Meanwhile, health workers migrating to the UK are subjected to stricter regulations and monitoring than they typically do back home. Health experts have attributed the numerous cases of medical negligence to insufficient enforcement of patient safety protocols and professional standards.

Unlike the UK, Nigeria does not provide a comprehensive record of disciplinary proceedings to the public. This paper searched the website of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), the regulatory body, but found no accessible records of hearings or decisions by its disciplinary arm, the Medical and Dental Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal (MDPDT). There are, however, media reports of MDCN sanctions imposed on health professionals, such as the suspension of three Euracare Multi-Specialist Hospital doctors over the death of author Chimamanda Adichie’s son earlier in the year.

Suspension for theft, breach of law

The MPTS suspended Sandra Ndirika, a urology trainee at New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton, in August 2025, for stealing from a patient and a colleague, as well as for her criminal conviction.

The first incident occurred in May 2023, according to the tribunal hearing records. That day, a patient visited the clinic where Ms Ndirika had an appointment. The MPTS document did not indicate the patient’s identity.

However, the victim left his coat behind with Ms Ndirika before entering the ward with a doctor for a short period. Then, Ms Ndirika removed the patient’s wallet from the coat, stole £30 in cash, and cloned his bank card. She subsequently used the cloned card to make online purchases.

On an undisclosed date, Ms Ndirika also stole a colleague’s purse at the hospital. According to the records, she picked up the nurse’s purse from her handbag in the staff room and used the bank card inside to order food online.

Ms Ndirika was charged by the police and eventually convicted in the Wolverhampton Magistrates’ Court. She was sentenced to about 4 months in prison in December 2023. She was also suspended for 18 months and ordered to pay £425 in compensation to the victims.

The tribunal ruled that her “criminal conviction” and conduct were “extremely serious” as they breached the “fundamental tenets” guiding practice.

Another Nigerian, Ifeanyi Ntomchukwu, who practised as a Senior Registrar at the Royal Derby Maternity Hospital, was suspended for two months for reckless driving and deliberate breach of the law. The tribunal had ruled that his “fitness to practise” was impaired by his actions and convictions.

Between July and September 2024, police caught the doctor driving at speeds over 100 miles per hour despite not being fully licensed. He drove on a provisional licence unsupervised multiple times, which is illegal. In September, he was charged in a magistrate’s court, subsequently convicted of eight monitoring offences, and fined £4,307.

The tribunal heard that Mr Ntomchukwu failed to inform the GMC of his conviction for nearly four months and ruled that this failure amounted to professional misconduct.

It also declared that his “conduct severely undermined public confidence in the medical profession.”

More suspensions

Other Nigerians whose cases were handled by the tribunal were suspended for many other reasons. Tijjani Shehu, a doctor at King’s Mill Hospital in England, was suspended for 12 months for failing to properly assess a patient before administering care.

The tribunal, in December 2025, heard that Mr Tijjani, while treating a patient with a severe bacterial infection that had developed into sepsis, failed to consider other symptoms, factor in the medical history, and consider an alternative diagnosis.

The incident occurred in December 2022. Records show that the patient died hours after arriving at the hospital. The facility attributed the loss to a “toxic shock syndrome” and “necrotising fasciitis.”

The tribunal did not rule that Mr Shehu caused or contributed to her death. Rather, it found that his failure delayed the patient’s correct diagnosis and treatment.

Anthony Shonde, a gastroenterologist at Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Nottingham, was suspended for 9 months in August 2025 for prescribing excessive potent opiates to patients.

Records show that between February 2020 and April 2020, whilst working for Letter Box Meds, Mr Shonde issued over 1,000 excessive prescriptions.

He also often failed to obtain the clinic history of patients before prescribing potent opiate drugs.

The tribunal also suspended Chikaodinaka Okolo, a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in March 2026 for the possession of hard drugs.

The tribunal also found that “in 2016, Okolo self-prescribed, issued prescriptions in the names of former patients and in the names of patients who never attended his unit.”

He also “issued prescriptions in the names of fictitious doctors and in April 2018 received a police caution at Lewisham Police Station for the possession of a Class A drug.”

Other Nigerians suspended are: Charles Anigala, Moboladale Ojutiku, Olusola Sanusi, John Akumabor, and Anthony Odume.

Meanwhile, a Nigerian who produced inaccurate autopsy results was let off on a warning. The tribunal ruled that Ufunwen Osayi’s actions were honest clinical errors caused by wrong judgment and “inadequate attention to templates” rather than “deliberate dishonesty, cover-up, or bad faith.”

The MPTS also declined the restoration applications of two Nigerians, Maduka Ogwueleka and Samuel Olatigbe, who were struck off the medical register years ago.

The tribunal was not convinced about their fitness to practice. (Premium Times)