The Akwa Ibom State officially announced the sacking of the state epidemiologist, Aniekeme Uwah, the epidemilogist has been the one in charge of the coronavirus in the state.

Mr Uwah, a former chairman of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Akwa Ibom State branch, was leading the fight against the spread of the coronavirus in the state as the state epidemiologist until his sudden removal on Friday.

It should be noted that the sacked doctor was among the African doctors honoured in 2019 by the African Union for their contributions to the fight against the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia.

The news of Mr Uwah’s removal first filtered into Facebook and Twitter on Friday afternoon before the state government, through the Commissioner for Health, Dominic Ukpong, later confirmed it a day after in a statement issued around 9 p.m. on Saturday.

The information that circulated on Facebook had it that Mr Uwah was removed for pushing in more samples for COVID-19 testing against the number ‘approved’ by the Commissioner for Health in Akwa Ibom, Dominic Ukpong.

Several media aides of Governor Udom Emmanuel scrambled on Facebook on Saturday to counter the information but ended up doing a poor job, posting contradictory and some hard-to-believe stories – in one of the stories, they claimed the sacked epidemiologist hung up a call against the governor. Mr Uwah had not spoken with the governor on the phone. He only had a meeting with the governor two days before he was sacked.

The spokesman for the Nigeria Medical Association in the state later confirmed that the doctor sacked because he failed to keep to the maximum number of 10 people to be tested per day in the state.