Dear Colleagues: I bring you new year greetings and wishes for momentous victories in the days and months ahead. It is indeed instructive that three days into 2014 we have been served the notice of battles ahead. 

We will not surrender our inalienable right to liberty, fairness, equity and justice under whatever circumstance. No one will be allowed to ride on us roughshod in the health sector, neither the elected President of Nigeria nor any member of the healthcare team to which we all belong will be allowed the luxury of misadventure to perpertuate tyranny, servitude and unwholesome dominion in the sector any longer.

 

The Surgeon-General bill was presented in the sixth National Assembly and was rejected and thrown out, because it was found out that it would exacerbate the accrimonious and chaotic situation in the health sector. It went before the Justice Abdullahi Gusau Committee on Harmony in the Health Sector and was rejected. How can it now come through Presidential fiat in a civilan democratic dispensation? This is the greatest joke and fraud of the century in Nigeria. It must not stand. We will teach them one or two lessions on how not to take a people for granted.

 

Court judgments have been treated with levity by the FMOH. Statutory Schemes of Service for other health professions have been trampled under feet by the FMOH, CMDs and MDs. Promotions of our members have been withheld for decades. Professional regulatory laws and Service circulars have been trampled under foot by the FMOH and her agents in hospitals. The rule of the thumb has replaced the rule of law and due process in the health sector. They claim to be wiser than the law courts, the legislature and the National Council on Establishment. They insist that their wishes and fancies must be elevated to the status of laws and schemes of sevice in the health sector. 

 

Haaba!!! Must this be allowed to continue???

 

The Assembly of Healthcare Professional Associations and the JOHESU will meet on Monday to address the nation and chart the course for a sustained struggle to defeat this mindless attempt to enslave us in the 21st Century.

All hands must be on deck to comply totally and comprehensively with the directives that will be issued on Monday. Those that have the cultivated the habit of sitting on the fence and flouting our directives for our collective good should rethink and decide on the legacies they want to bequeat to unborn generations in the health sector of Nigeria.

 

Now is the time to act to break all vestiges of enslavement, injustice and reckless conduct in the health sector. 100 years of nationhood should herald professional liberty, a sense of belonging, fulfillment and actualization in the health sector in Nigeria. We must stand up to resist this flagrant assault to the very soul of our professional existence.

Thank you.

Dr. G. C. Okara

National President, AMLSN

Chairman, Assembly of Health Professional Associations (AHPA) Abuja.