The seven-day ultimatum issued by the Minister of Labor and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, threatening to sack medical doctors who have been on an indefinite strike deserves a careful attention to substance and symbolism. Irrespective of the intention of the Minister’s ultimatum which expired yesterday, Monday August 16, 2021, Ngige’s warning is devoid of the cultivated intonation for which the medical field as an enclave of civility is noted, even if there is merit in conveying a sense of urgency and desperation because of the impact the strike is having on the crisis-ridden healthcare sector amid the Covid-19 pandemic. As the strike by the members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) lingers, the insensitivity of the Federal Government, to weighty matters deserving prompt response, has further degenerated into a posture of arrogance, going by Ngige’s recent reaction to the crisis. The crisis in the healthcare sector deserves a bold policy initiative by the President. It demands urgent action in order to abort a ticking time bomb with its ominous dire consequences.
On Monday August 2, NARD resumed the indefinite strike it had suspended earlier in April, saying after 100 days, the government was acting in bad faith and taking their members for granted. The doctors’ grievances are contained in a Memorandum of Action (MOA) endorsed in April by both striking doctors and the government negotiators including Ngige. The doctors are demanding, amongst other things, the immediate payment of Covid-19 allowances owed its members in federal and state tertiary institutions. They are also demanding the review of hazard allowance for health workers due to the risk associated with their profession. The association also decried the undue hardship its members on GIFMIS platform are facing due to the delays in payment of their salaries ranging from three to seven months. The strike is to register the displeasure of the doctors over the government’s alleged refusal to pay their earned allowances for excess workload, postgraduate teaching and supervision, going back months.
But rather than admit that the government has failed to honor its own part of the bargain or even plead for more time for the government to put the package together, Ngige has adopted a confrontational attitude against his erstwhile colleagues; accusing them of jealousy and jeopardizing the medical profession by conducting themselves in an undignified manner; threatening to sack all the doctors. Speaking at the 2nd Summit of Medical Elders Forum (MEF), Ngige warned that the medical profession in Nigeria is in great danger and accused the doctors of trying to play God. His words: “At no time in the history of medical association am I seeing our association and our profession in danger as I am seeing now. Many people will not see it but from where I am sitting and standing, I can see danger ahead. We are one of the oldest professions on earth, metamorphosing from natural and traditional healers to take away pain from people and consequently save lives. We don’t create lives, God creates, we only preserve people’s lives through the act of God. In doing so, God has given us some powers… but there is something God does not want, God does not want when he gives you powers you use it to try to say that you are like him or you are competing with him. God loves you to do that which he has asked you to do; to use that power with humility.”
As the strike action by NARD progresses beyond the second week, the decadence in the nation’s healthcare and tertiary education system is further revealed and the insensitivity of its management fully advertised by the rabble-rousing of Ngige who even accused the doctors of jealousy; claiming that doctors in the country only embark on incessant strikes to bring down their colleagues appointed into political positions. Hear Ngige: ”Doctors should ask themselves questions; why is it that it is when your colleagues are in government that you go on the greatest number of strikes. Some of these colleagues were Presidents, Secretary Generals of NMA and even NARD. Dr. Onyebuchi Chukwu, Dr. Isaac Adewole faced plenty of strikes, since our government came I have consolidated four strikes. Something is wrong.
We must start by telling ourselves the truth. You say they dislike doctors, what did you do that they disliked you? Yes, there is peer envy, yes some wanted to study medicine and they couldn’t, we know it, and if you know it, you carry yourself with dignity and humility.”
Following the strike, Ngige invoked the “no work, no pay rule” against the striking doctors. Appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today program, Ngige cast banal, vituperative aspersions ornamented with harmful grandiloquence, saying the doctors were taking the nation for a ride. He also threatened that the doctors would be sacked by their various employers if the seven-day ultimatum he issued them expires. The ultimatum expired yesterday, Monday and Ngige is yet to make good his threat. Rather the doctors have called off his bluff, with NARD President, Okhuaihesuyi Uyilawa, insisting the strike would continue until their demands are met. “Let him sack all of us, we are not begging him. He is just the minister of Labor and not President Muhammadu Buhari. He’s not even the first to sack doctors. Onyebuchi (Chukwu), the health minister between 2010 and 2014, sacked doctors during his time. The only thing that happened was that it brought the sector down. When Ngige does the same thing, it will only appear in his legacy as the Labor minister that sacked doctors because they are demanding their wages and welfare packages.”
Honestly speaking, Ngige overstepped his bounds when he went to town with ultimatums and empty threats to sack the striking doctors. While any act of lawlessness or arbitrariness on the part of the doctors cannot and must not be condoned, a Labor and Employment helmsman who seeks to run the Ministry and regulate labor unions like a military administrator should be viewed with suspicion. A certain sense of urgency or the need for discipline may be what Ngige was out to convey, his choice of words is still unacceptable, desirable as the message is. There are finer and more decorous ways of passing a message to one’s constituency, especially the medical profession. NARD constitutes the largest percentage of public medical practitioners in Nigeria and since the beginning of the strike; Nigerians who need medical attention are relying on private hospitals for medical services. The present situation is not sustainable and Ngige should know better!
And NARD members of the academic communities, especially in the state-owned universities must see themselves as part of a universal culture. They cannot, particularly live by different rules. It is also this seeming disregard for the Nigerian people that is reflected in the Labor minister’s reaction to NARD. If the government is truly hamstrung by the non-availability of funds to address NARD’s demands, there are better, more decorous manners of conveying such misgivings. It is bad enough that the government cannot honor an agreement it freely went into with medical doctors; this volte-face is a poor example of how political leaders should treat the people, on whose behalf they exercise power.
If government had the desire of revamping the healthcare sector, must it take a prolonged strike by doctors to realize this? Why should strike become the only impetus to drive government to do the needful? By this gesture, the federal government seems to flounder in the commitment necessary to build the nation’s human capital. It seems to misconstrue this all-important aspect of national development as a dispensable contract. If the government is desirous of taking the health of its citizens and medical practice in the country seriously, it must be aware of the wherewithal to make the study and practice of medicine one of learning and character. Nonetheless, Ngige should not forget that though he is in a superintending position, he too operates within certain rules and regulations. It is delusory and dangerous for him to suggest that he has the power to sack doctors as if he appointed them. Ministers and their agents in departments, agencies and commissions should not see themselves as overlords. They are appointees who hold their position in trust for the people, and their success will depend on how well they discharge their duties within the limits of the rules, not beyond them.
