Nigerian public office holders think and act stupid. They lack crisis management techniques. This is the same stupid solution that Babatunde Fashola adopted, when doctors were striking in Lagos State a few years back. He ordered the sack of the striking doctors, just like Adebowale. Like I said at the time, foreign governments and companies would snatch some of them up quickly. Saudi Arabia and Dubai are good example of countries that offer good pay to Nigerian doctors. Nigeria has only 35,000 medical doctors and needs at least 237,000 doctors to be comfortable. Instead of Nigerian public officials trying to work with striking doctors, they act stupid by firing them and eventually losing some of them to foreign countries. They will never learn.
Stupid is what Stupid does. You can't stop Stupid from acting Stupid.
Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, has directed the chief medical directors and medical director of federal tertiary hospitals to fill the vacancies created by resident doctors who have “abandoned” their training programme by refusing to report for work.
The directive was contained in a circular signed by the permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Amina Shamaki, and sent to medical directors of hospitals.
“It has come to the notice of the Management of the Ministry that some Resident Doctors in your establishment have voluntarily withdrawn from the Residency Training Program by refusing to report for training without authorization. Public Service Rule, PSR 030402 (e) is relevant. This is in spite of the ongoing negotiations on their demands put forward by the representatives of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) under the auspices of the Nigerian Medical Association.
“In view of this development, you are hereby directed to replace all the doctors that have withdrawn their services, with others from the pool of applicants for the training programs in the various disciplines in order not to create ominous gap in training with attendant disruption of health care delivery in your facility.
“Meanwhile, the ministry is working with the panel on the review of the Residency Training Program in Nigeria, led by Professor Wole Atoyebi, the Registrar of the National Postgraduate Medical College, to fast-track the development of a comprehensive blueprint for postgraduate training of doctors in the country.
“Please, ensure immediate compliance,” the circular read.
Exactly. Nigerians may not know the horrible working conditions that Nigerian doctors are under, until they visit Nigerian hospitals to see for themselves. I doff my hat to all Nigerian doctors that have ever worked under those conditions in Nigeria. They are inhuman and horrible working conditions, to say the least.
Back in the eighties, during the Shagara era, I was invited to the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) in Kaduna by one of my doctor friends working at that hospital, to see what they go through every day. The hospital wards assigned to my friend with the medical students under him were full of dying patients from wall to wall, up to the outside of the wards and in the hallways. For you to move around the rooms, you had to step on some of the patients, who were in severe pains, crying and dying. It was like a war zone. I had never seen any thing like that in my whole life up till that day and I did not wish to see that again.
My friend was busy every second attending to the patients and trying to save their lives without drugs and medical equipment for the two hours that I spent with him at the hospitals. The hospital buildings were old and dilapidated. There were little or no medical equipment. There were no drugs. No IV; no pain medication. There were few beds and there was blood everywhere. Most of the patients were laying on the bare floor. Some of them were already dead, but I did not know this, until my friend told me. I eventually saw people dying and I couldn't count how many patients died within that two hour period that I spent at the hospital. There were dead among the living and some of the living were wishing to die quickly. As some of them were dying, new ones were being brought in every minute.
They were young and old, men and women and their was little, if anything, that my friend and his students could do to save a lot of them. They were literally helpless. I never saw human beings dying that fast, until that day. The dead could not be removed on time to be taken to the mortuary, because the mortuary was over crowded and overflowing with dead bodies left and center. I never knew a hospital could be literally seen as a glorified mortuary until that day. Up till that day, the phrase 'Glorified Mortuary' only existed and appeared to me as a fiction on the front pages of Nigerian Newspapers. People supposed to go to the hospital to be healed and saved, but they were coming to the hospital to die an untimely death.
Yet, people like Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekweme, Umaru Dikko, Adisa Akinloye and Akanbi Oniyangi, to mention a few were busy awarding contracts for importation of fake rice and thousands of Mercedes Benz that worth billions of dollars. They were busy stealing from Nigerians and diverting funds to their private accounts abroad. They were having parties with Nigerians' monies at the expense of Nigerians they all sworn to protect and serve. They were building new houses everywhere and buying new cars. At the time, Nigeria had more Mercedes Benz with CVU tags than Germany, the home of Mercedes Benz.
I told my friend I had to leave and for him to meet me at his residence when he gets off work as I could not take it anymore. I could not eat all that day. I could not imagine my self working under those conditions every day and still maintain my sanity. Left to me, like I told my friend, I would have staged a one-man strike on my second day on the job. I would 'F' the so called Hippocratic Oath that the doctors are sworn to and put like six dead bodies in the trunk of my car and drive all the way to Number 1, Ribadu Road in IKoyi, Lagos to see the hypocrites and drop one at Shagari's door step and move through the rest of Ikoyi to Alex Ekweme, Joseph Wayas, Umaru Dikko, Adisa Akinloye and Akanbi Oniyangi's residences, with a note that says 'Stop Looting, Fix The Hospitals'.
Their positions do not make them subhuman and for them to subjugate themselves to ill treatment either. Every human being has the right to fight for his rights.
They are doing Nigeria a great service by sticking around to sacrifice at all cost with low pay and lack of needed and necessary equipment in the hospitals, in order to improve the health of the people, inspite of the adversity they face everyday, when their counterparts are paid ten folds in foreign countries and are well respected as human beings supposed to be respected.
They all have the option to leave the country like their fellow Nigerians in the diaspora, but they didn't, because they want to help the people and the country. That is highly commendable. But they do not deserve to be treated like animals. Human beings can only tolerate so much.
The directive was contained in a circular signed by the permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Amina Shamaki, and sent to medical directors of hospitals.
“It has come to the notice of the Management of the Ministry that some Resident Doctors in your establishment have voluntarily withdrawn from the Residency Training Program by refusing to report for training without authorization. Public Service Rule, PSR 030402 (e) is relevant. This is in spite of the ongoing negotiations on their demands put forward by the representatives of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) under the auspices of the Nigerian Medical Association.
“In view of this development, you are hereby directed to replace all the doctors that have withdrawn their services, with others from the pool of applicants for the training programs in the various disciplines in order not to create ominous gap in training with attendant disruption of health care delivery in your facility.
“Meanwhile, the ministry is working with the panel on the review of the Residency Training Program in Nigeria, led by Professor Wole Atoyebi, the Registrar of the National Postgraduate Medical College, to fast-track the development of a comprehensive blueprint for postgraduate training of doctors in the country.
“Please, ensure immediate compliance,” the circular read.
Exactly. Nigerians may not know the horrible working conditions that Nigerian doctors are under, until they visit Nigerian hospitals to see for themselves. I doff my hat to all Nigerian doctors that have ever worked under those conditions in Nigeria. They are inhuman and horrible working conditions, to say the least.
Back in the eighties, during the Shagara era, I was invited to the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) in Kaduna by one of my doctor friends working at that hospital, to see what they go through every day. The hospital wards assigned to my friend with the medical students under him were full of dying patients from wall to wall, up to the outside of the wards and in the hallways. For you to move around the rooms, you had to step on some of the patients, who were in severe pains, crying and dying. It was like a war zone. I had never seen any thing like that in my whole life up till that day and I did not wish to see that again.
My friend was busy every second attending to the patients and trying to save their lives without drugs and medical equipment for the two hours that I spent with him at the hospitals. The hospital buildings were old and dilapidated. There were little or no medical equipment. There were no drugs. No IV; no pain medication. There were few beds and there was blood everywhere. Most of the patients were laying on the bare floor. Some of them were already dead, but I did not know this, until my friend told me. I eventually saw people dying and I couldn't count how many patients died within that two hour period that I spent at the hospital. There were dead among the living and some of the living were wishing to die quickly. As some of them were dying, new ones were being brought in every minute.
They were young and old, men and women and their was little, if anything, that my friend and his students could do to save a lot of them. They were literally helpless. I never saw human beings dying that fast, until that day. The dead could not be removed on time to be taken to the mortuary, because the mortuary was over crowded and overflowing with dead bodies left and center. I never knew a hospital could be literally seen as a glorified mortuary until that day. Up till that day, the phrase 'Glorified Mortuary' only existed and appeared to me as a fiction on the front pages of Nigerian Newspapers. People supposed to go to the hospital to be healed and saved, but they were coming to the hospital to die an untimely death.
Yet, people like Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekweme, Umaru Dikko, Adisa Akinloye and Akanbi Oniyangi, to mention a few were busy awarding contracts for importation of fake rice and thousands of Mercedes Benz that worth billions of dollars. They were busy stealing from Nigerians and diverting funds to their private accounts abroad. They were having parties with Nigerians' monies at the expense of Nigerians they all sworn to protect and serve. They were building new houses everywhere and buying new cars. At the time, Nigeria had more Mercedes Benz with CVU tags than Germany, the home of Mercedes Benz.
I told my friend I had to leave and for him to meet me at his residence when he gets off work as I could not take it anymore. I could not eat all that day. I could not imagine my self working under those conditions every day and still maintain my sanity. Left to me, like I told my friend, I would have staged a one-man strike on my second day on the job. I would 'F' the so called Hippocratic Oath that the doctors are sworn to and put like six dead bodies in the trunk of my car and drive all the way to Number 1, Ribadu Road in IKoyi, Lagos to see the hypocrites and drop one at Shagari's door step and move through the rest of Ikoyi to Alex Ekweme, Joseph Wayas, Umaru Dikko, Adisa Akinloye and Akanbi Oniyangi's residences, with a note that says 'Stop Looting, Fix The Hospitals'.
Their positions do not make them subhuman and for them to subjugate themselves to ill treatment either. Every human being has the right to fight for his rights.
They are doing Nigeria a great service by sticking around to sacrifice at all cost with low pay and lack of needed and necessary equipment in the hospitals, in order to improve the health of the people, inspite of the adversity they face everyday, when their counterparts are paid ten folds in foreign countries and are well respected as human beings supposed to be respected.
They all have the option to leave the country like their fellow Nigerians in the diaspora, but they didn't, because they want to help the people and the country. That is highly commendable. But they do not deserve to be treated like animals. Human beings can only tolerate so much.
Kayode Adebayo
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