RE: MDCAN's Vacuous rebuttal to Prof Emmanuel Osodeke's valid assertions By Dr Suleiman Zakariya Shani


Posted on: Mon 11-10-2021

The acts establishing NPMCN and Federal Universities are different and therefore their outputs and certifications cannot be the same or be allowed to operate on the same pedestal. @NUC has repeated erred in the matter so for long, because most of their management team who should sagaciously and judiciously adjudicate in the matter have been aficionadas, corteges and admirers of the medical profession.

NUC has been spooked, browbeaten and cowed alot by MDCAN into recognising it as equivalent to a PhD status. A masters degree would have been more appropriate despite the number of years spent to acquire it. The practicalities and academic demands of the fellowship program simply does not surpassed that of a masters degree in all scholastic ramifications.  

Beside it's unstructured and mostly based on oral assessments.  

The dissertation at the end of the program must be conducted in a way that involves and seeks input from other faculties of the university establishment ascertaining the rigorous nature of the fellowship. This would make it more appealing and worthy of keeping up with Masters and phd programs. I am happy that MDCAN confessed that, there really is no contradiction between a Medical and Dental Postgraduate Fellowship and a PhD, so therefore cannot be used interchangeably. Doing so has invariably implied that the fellowship program is greater than a masters degree.  

How and Why?

The curriculum for Masters and Phd and medical fellowship and who administer it are different and founded by different legislations.

There is a need to standardised the training and give universities the annuity and authority to grant it based on assessment of research capacity by other faculties  

For instance, IF MDCAN MEMBERS ARE ALLOWED TO BE VCs can other lecturers from the department of say sociology be CMDs in teaching hospitals.  

If there is no confusion as you claim why force yourself to be VCs. If you must argue it, then there was and there still is no basis for it. Discussions are always preferable to debates and arguments, because an argument seeks to determine who is right, whereas a discussion seeks to determine what is proper.

The fact that the Governing Board of the LASU added the Postgraduate Medical and Dental Fellowship to its recent solicitation for the office of Vice Chancellor, is wrong.  

I am even astonished in sackcloth and ashes, and rightly so, that the rejoinder mentioned this as a basis for their argument. That could as well be due to their uninformed position on the matter. They don't make the laws. Your claim that Clinical fellowships members have served as Vice Chancellors of numerous Nigerian universities, achieving spectacular and outstanding results are a blatant lie, they have mainly done so after becoming professors in the academia.  

On the issue of their enviable performances, I await the yardstick you have used to measure those university key performance indicators that made them stood out from the rest of the crowd.  

In conclusion, I see MDCAN as an egalitarian association, who sees itself as above-board, that is suddenly now realising their limitations in society.

Dr Suleiman Zakariya Shani