THE  justification for the position of a Surgeon – General, hinged on the need for such a public officer to be saddled with the responsibility of coordinating public health on face value is ridiculous and certainly most unconvincing.  This is because the basic tenets of medical training positions any registered medical practitioner to undertake the responsibility of driving processes that border on public health.

Duplication

It is instructive to note that the office of the Assistant Secretary of health to which the Surgeon General reports in the United State of America is junior to the Minister of State for Health in Nigeria.

The office in whatever nomenclature will mean an unnecessary duplication of offices and functions which are presently being articulated and undertaken by the office of the Minister of Health and the Minister of State for Health with an array of Directors, Deputy Directors and Assistant Directors.  Some stakeholders in health probably see Nigeria as a Health outpost that deserves a Chief Medical Officer.

Team concept

The fact is that healthcare is increasingly a team concept and multidisciplinary where each stakeholder contributes to a pooled effort to achieve desired outcomes.

The health sector has suffered from avoidable entropy because of ill – conceived policies and statutes over time.  What is the enabling law to justify the appointment of Surgeon – General in Nigeria?

Our nation needs appointments that can truly impact by ameliorating the burdens of our depressed citizenry and not those that intensify conflict potentials in a perennially tension – soaked sector at the detriment of overwhelming pubic interest. Surgeon-General is not a professional cadre.

Consequences

One is bound to ask if the President has powers to appoint a Surgeon General. The concept remains both unconstitutional and outrightly unlawful. It is an unnecessary procedure. On face value, it is valueless.

Government is advised to remember the consequences of the unlawful Medical Salary Scale, MSS, of the 90′s which is the precursor of the industrial disharmony in the public service where different cadres  of workers agitate for discriminatory and exclusive wages.

The move to appoint a Surgeon General will lead to demands for such by all cadres of workers and therefore makes government more vulnerable to strikes and shut-downs in the months ahead.

We all believe that access to good health is the right of the Nigerian citizen, but what we are saying as long as we continue to embrace and encourage these half measures and methodologies grounded in nepotism, so long shall we continue to contend with negative indices in healthcare.