Mohammed Gololo, a lawmaker representing the Gamawa Federal Constituency, has added his voice to the increasing rate of Nigerian Medical professionals leaving the country, stating that it posses a dangerous threat to Nigeria’s healthcare system.
Majority of Nigerian physicians and Medical Doctors are moving outside the country for professional practice and top among the push factors are poor remuneration, rising insecurity and inadequate diagnostic facilities.
According to the Lawmaker, the observed trend portends danger to the country’s health system due to the foreseeable negative consequences of medical practitioners deficit to the system.
In view of that, the legislator wants government, as a matter of urgency, tackle the massive exodus to ensure that patients across all major Hospitals are well administered medically by qualified doctors.
”The Nigerian government in its wisdom, has been interfacing with their Unions because the medical Doctors have their own Association, and the Ministry of Health has also been interfacing with them in order to see how best they can mitigate the situation and also trying to discourage them from migrating our country Nigeria,” Gololo told Africanews360.com in an exclusive interview during his recent trip to the UK.
Commenting further, the Honorable Member of Parliament mentioned that: ‘‘It’s not as if we have enough Doctors in the country, currently we are lacking Doctors. Of course, you know they also have different challenges, these are people that have spent more years than their co-peers who they started schooling together, whom are doing different fields, most of the courses are for five years while others are seven and in some cases ten years. So before they could come out to the labour market, they already have some kind of challenges but their peers would be already established, so the pace at which they try to kind of meet up with their peers is an issue, then of course, the pay they felt is not commensurable, to their practice or their profession.
”In any case, government is doing its best to see how best they can kind of motivate them to remain at home, that is the Commission of Salary and Wages are with the Ministry of Labour and Productivity and their union that are interfacing from the government and their own aspect so we are hopeful by the grace of God they can get to the root of the matter and see a win- win situation.
”We lack Doctors as we speak, the Doctors are only in the Cities, when you go to the rural communities they are no Doctors, all that you will find there are only Nurses, Matrons being the highest so we really need them and they know that. As for their pleas it has always been listened to, at any given time, they have always been listened to but don’t forget that it keeps compounding in the sense that year in, year out we get more Doctors graduating from school to join the system so definitely the demand for good remuneration would go up and thereby putting pressure on government to meet their demands,” He concluded.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian government and doctors have now agreed the situation has reached crisis point. Despite Nigeria’s population of 218 million, the country only has 24,000 licensed doctors.
The World Health Organization included Nigeria on its recent red list to discourage other countries from hunting an already depleted medical workforce. The UK is the biggest recruiter of Nigerian doctors, alongside Canada, the US and Saudi Arabia. Between 2015 and 2021, the Development Research and Projects Centre, a Nigeria-based not-for-profit, estimates that nearly 5,000 doctors relocated to the UK.
Nigerian doctors say that the country’s private sector suffers even more than the state-funded system. In 2020, Hameed Adediran established Crest Care Services, which provides home care for elderly people and those with special needs. Although common in the west, the concept is novel in Nigeria.
Staff go through specialist training and retraining but rarely stay long. In Adediran’s view, the company has become a stopgap for doctors heading for the exit. “It is difficult to retain our personnel for long because the person you are hiring is either on his way out or is already out but working to save up his flight fare.”
The fear is that other private health entrepreneurs might be discouraged from investing in employee training, with knock-on effects on the quality of care.
Competition for jobs abroad is stiff, taking only the best skilled. Those who fail to make the grade might be forced to stay unwillingly in their home country. This, Adediran said, can lead to low motivation and poor standards of service.
Also, MPs in Nigeria, have backed a new bill for medical graduates, designed to limit brain drain to countries including the UK and US.
A new bill to impose five years’ mandatory service on Nigeria’s medical graduates in an effort to stop the exodus of doctors to the UK and the US has been attacked as “obnoxious”.
The bill, which could be put to a public hearing in the next few days, passed its second reading in the Nigerian parliament’s lower house recently.
However, the plan is being met with resistance, with the doctors’ union and civil society organizations fiercely opposed. Calling it “obnoxious and outlandish”, Dr Innocent Orji, the president of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors, said: “We are going to resist the bill. The bill should be withdrawn immediately. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
However, the government is pressing ahead, hoping to address the huge problem of brain drain among Nigeria’s medical professionals and set a timeline to recoup investment by the country’s education system.
