Posted on: Thu 10-03-2022

Pharmacists under the aegis of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), Lagos State, has urged the Federal Government to encourage all state governments and local government areas to institute the consultant cadre for pharmacists and indeed eligible health workers across board. Also, the PSN in Lagos State has called on the three tiers of government at to involve pharmacists, medical laboratory scientists and other health workers in primary healthcare service provisions in the country. It made call in an address at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the PSN in Lagos State.

The consultant clinical pharmacist cadre is an advanced level of career position who is a pace-setter in education, research and the delivery of specialist/expert pharmacy practice. The Consultant Cadre for pharmacists is necessary for the sustainable growth of the pharmacy profession albeit globally.

This cadre puts pharmacy at a height of professional learning and practice to look up to. The chairman of Lagos PSN, Pharm. Gbolagade Iyiola in his address during the AGM held in Ogudu GRA Lagos today, called on the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu to lift the suspension imposed on the consultant cadre for pharmacists in the employment of the Lagos State Government in 2018 by the former Lagos State Governor, Akinwumi Ambode.

“The May, 2018 approval of this cadre in 2018 was a product of Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU)-Lagos State Government (LASG) negotiations which was sacrificed by the Ambode administration to satisfy the yearnings of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) under the Faduyile led administration of that era. Iyiola lamented that this is what the Ujah led cabal leveraged on as benchmark for the Federal Government in its 2020 memo to the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF) where it raised hell on the approval of the consultant cadre for pharmacists in Nigeria. It also noted that this matter is presently being challenged by the JOHESU at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN), Ibadan Division to stop the abuse obviously aided by government inaction.

The PSN in Lagos similarly urged JOHESU, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) to show more than an ordinary interest in the trade dispute between the LASG and Nigeria Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP), Lagos State Branch According to Iyiola, it should be within the rights and liberties of any citizen/citizens of Nigeria to indulge in speciality skill acquisition without an unwholesome meddlesomeness by another group of Nigerians because the Nigerian constitution establishes with clarity, the basis of citizenship as freeborn. “Nobody can hold down the quest for growth and self-development of others.”

He lamented that it has become the norm for physicians to demand what they perceive is good for them and then go ahead to impose standards on what can be approved for any other stakeholder in the Nigerian space. The Lagos PSN described as misnomer federal and state governments penchant to invite NMA to directly and indirectly participate in negotiations of the welfare packages of non-physician health workers when such is never extended to these group of personnel in the negotiation of the benefit of physicians. To this end, Lagos PSN advised the Lagos State Government (LASG) to stop the invitation of physicians to dabble into a trade dispute between LASG and NUAHP, Lagos State Branch. He noted that while the consultant pharmacist cadre was almost truncated in Nigeria, it has been deeply rooted in countries like Ghana and Sierra-Leone which are lesser endowed member-countries of the West African Postgraduate College of Pharmacists (WAPCP). “The circularisation of the consultant pharmacist cadre is in tandem with international best practice across the globe from the United Kindgom (U.K), the United States (U.S), France, Australia and in some African countries,” Iyiola added.

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