The recent sack of 16,000 resident doctors by President Goodluck Jonathan came as a rude shock to most Nigerians and the international community, even as the deadly Ebola virus disease (EVD) remains a challenge. The sack was contained in a directive by Mr Jonathan to the Federal Ministry of Health to suspend all residency training programmes for Nigerian doctors. Resident doctors are doctors being trained to become specialists/consultants in different fields of medicine. During their four to five years’ training to become consultants, they work in different government hospitals and make up about 90 per cent of doctors in teaching hospitals.

 

The sack came at an inauspicious time when the president is supposed to give priority to reversing the current challenge of dearth of doctors in the country which has led to a scandalously poor doctor-patient ratio of 1 to 6,400 in Nigeria as against the World Health Organization’s standard of 1 to 600. Cuba has a ratio of 1 doctor to 125 people, according to experts. The 2011 Mo Ibrahim African Governance Index rating had ranked the Nigerian health service 51 out of 53 countries in Africa. Aside the EVD outbreak, the sack came despite a WHO report which revealed that 59,000 Nigerian women die annually from pregnancy and child birth; only 39 per cent of births are delivered by skilled health professionals and the risk of a woman dying from child birth is 1 in 18 in Nigeria, compared to 1 in 61 for all developing countries and 1 in 800 in developed countries.

 

The problem of inadequate doctors in Nigerian hospitals is a direct function of poor human resources planning and structures, unsatisfactory working conditions, poor remuneration, and scarce professional development opportunities, according to the ex-national president of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Osahon Enabulele, who described the current “presidential order” to sack the doctors as “most un-statesmanly, unsustainable and ill-advised approach towards the resolution of the challenges in the health sector”.

 

I agree with him. The NMA to which the resident doctors are affiliated has been on strike since July 1. One of the demands of the group is that the federal government through the Ministry of Health should formalize and implement the report of the inter-agency committee on residency training. The NMA also asked the FG to release a uniform template on the appointment of resident doctors and a funding framework for residency training established while overseas clinical attachment be fully restored and properly funded.

 

Even though the doctors may not have acted in the best tradition of medical personnel and national interest in the face of the EVD outbreak because of their strike action, it is not still enough for the government to strike them down. They are doctors and there is no way the present administration can convince Nigerians that it will recruit 16,000 doctors overnight to take their place. It is probably based on this realization that the president of NARD, Jubril Abdullahi, has pooh-poohed the presidential directive to sack his members. Abdullahi also accused the president of acting the script of the Joint Health Workers Union (JOHESU).

 

The current sack of 16,000 doctors will no doubt worsen brain drain in our health sector. It is an open secret that most Nigerian doctors are presently plying their trade in the United States, Britain, South Africa and other neighbouring African countries where medical personnel are treated better. Instead of strengthening health workers’ motivation, the government is busy sacking the few good hands still managing to cope with the unbearable service conditions in our health sector. The action is nothing but a colossal rip-off of the nation and a rape on the collective intelligence of the ordinary Nigerian which must be condemned and rejected by all. It is a panic measure which has exposed the underbelly of frustration on the part of the Jonathan’s administration over its inability to manage 16,000 doctors. How do you hope to manage 170 million Nigerians if you cannot manage 16,000 workers in one sector?

 

Needless to say, the present microwave action of the FG again portrays an administration on auto-pilot. No institutional memory. No systems. No finesse. Doctors are not a band of “okada” riders. They are not “mairuwa”. They are not “maiguard”. They are certainly not wheelbarrow pushers that one can dismiss with a wave of the hand. These are professional health practitioners undergoing further residency training to qualify as consultants. Even if you get part-time doctors who are of “good behaviour” to replace them, head or tail the nation loses. The people whose taxes are being spent to sustain the resident doctors will lose. The health of the nation will worsen. What manner of administrators are these?

 

This is a government that is not bothered about the health condition of its people because they have unrestricted access to vast national resources to seek medical attention in developed climes. A government not bothered about the education of its people. A government not bothered about power situation in the country. A government not bothered about the unemployed graduates. Where else on earth would a government after privatizing its power sector turn around to provide “soft loans” to the new private owners to run their businesses as recently disclosed by Vice President Namadi Sambo? It is akin to selling your used car for N200, 000 only to give out N100,000 out of the sum to the buyer as “soft loan” to service and put the car in workable condition. Who are the owners of the electricity distribution companies (Discos) and generation companies (Gencos) if not those acting as fronts for former and present rulers of this country? This is foolishness elevated to the art of governance. This is taking the people for granted.

 

There is a story about two top military men who did not only sack doctors but ordered that their personal effects be thrown out of government quarters. But when one of them was sick of diarrhoea, it was the same doctors who they so ill-treated that attended to him at the intensive care unit of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital before he regrettably kicked the bucket.

 

Private hospitals are booming — bleeding the people through exorbitant medical bills in the name of treatment. It is on record that the NMA even mooted the idea of returning to work when the EVD broke out but for the lack of consensus among its rank and file. They felt concerned. Ebola, even if a dreadful disease, is not a death sentence on Nigeria. Government ought to have given the research institutes being kept at the nation’s expense the marching orders to find a cure for the EVD instead of allowing false doctors and prophets to prescribe salt-water bath as a cure-all for Ebola to its citizens. Nigerians are also being asked to consume bitter kola in quantum. What a shame!

 

What is the minister of health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, doing? He failed to learn from the example of the minister of education, Ibrahim Shekarau. Polytechnics and colleges of education lecturers were on strike for a year before Shekarau was appointed education minister. He spoke to the lecturers in the language they understood and, pronto, they suspended the strike. Why can’t government engage in fruitful negotiations or keep to agreements reached?

 

This is nothing but a panic measure by an unprepared government. This reactionary tendency is no doubt a carryover from the military era that favours jackboots rather than painstaking negotiations and dialogue with workers.

 

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” penned George Santayana.