Before our doctors go on strike again

The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), the umbrella body for medical doctors in the country, recently extended by four weeks the subsisting 21-day ultimatum it issued the federal government. The extension is to allow for implementation of the elements of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the government signed with the union.
Addressing journalists in Abuja last week, the president of the association, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, expressed dismay over the non-payment of its members’ wages for several months. He lamented the untold hardship this has unleashed on doctors and their families.
In spite of the ultimatum extension, the association resolved to take necessary action to protect the interest of its members if government fails to resolve the contentious issues within the extra time. It urged the federal government to urgently and permanently resolve the unacceptable irregularities in the current implementation of the IPPIS scheme. Enabulele disclosed that the association’s National Executive Committee would take appropriate action without further warning to the government after the expiration of the four-week extension.
Certainly, a doctors’ strike is one headache the nation can do without at this time. With the unending and intractable ASUU strike that has kept our universities under lock and key, and our hydra-headed security difficulties, grounding the nation’s hospitals now or in another four weeks, would be one trouble too many.
Making and breaking promises is fast becoming a stock in trade of the federal government. It seems the government makes these promises just to get striking workers back to work without any consideration of how to fulfill them. Once the parties leave the dialogue table, signed MoUs are abandoned before the ink on them dries. The workers return to work believing the federal government will do the honourable thing and implement the agreement it signed, even when the government has no intention of doing any such thing. So, one year or less down the road, the MoUs come back to haunt the government. That is how industrial actions have become a game of musical chairs in Nigeria.
A responsible and responsive government should not make promises it cannot or has no intention of keeping. It is, in fact, fraudulent to sign a MoU knowing that you have no intention of honouring your side of the agreement. An economy that hopes to get out of the doldrums cannot afford to be plagued by incessant strikes. Paying lip service to Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) while at the same time making doctors in public hospitals work without pay do not make sense.
We urge the federal government to immediately find ways to pay what it owes doctors across the country, including the resident doctors. It is both a matter of honour and responsibility. If private employers are guilty of owing salaries, it is disgraceful to find the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guilty of the same offence. The federal government ought to have counted the costs before signing agreements with doctors and issuing resident doctors with letters of appointment.
To restore job satisfaction and possibly stem industrial disputes by doctors, all levels of government in Nigeria need to sustain current wages and pay them as due. The government should also consider introducing non-financial benefits. There is a need to adopt policies geared towards increasing government spending on health especially in the area of human capacity and infrastructural development, so that Nigerian doctors can compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world. We need to provide them opportunities for skill acquisition and career development.
Doctors’ strikes are deadly. Unlike other professionals, even a one-day strike by medical doctors results in loss of lives and other irreversible damages. Patients who die during doctors’ strikes cannot be brought back to life after the strikes are called off.
If the NMA carries out its threat and embarks on this strike, those who would die during the action will not be alive when government pays the outstanding wages. What that means is that the doctors will march, smiling, to their banks on the blood of dead patients.
Our position is unequivocal. Doctors deserve their wages and the full implementation of any MoU that the government has signed with them.  We do not even think that that the country can pay them their worth. But, then, we do not support the quick resort to strikes by any category of workers in the country, especially doctors. Since doctors were not trained to work in government establishments alone, it would be better for them to consider private practice as an option if the government cannot meet their demands. Doctors are entitled to job satisfaction but the loss of lives that these strikes entail is unacceptable.
We enjoin the NMA and the affected doctors to consider the Hippocratic Oath they swore to save lives and the avoidable deaths that the proposed strike would cause. Let the doctors re-consider the plan to withdraw their services at the expiration of this ultimatum.