Lagos resident doctors protest sacking

Members of the Lagos State chapter, Nigerian Medical Association, staged a protest at the Lagos University Edifying Hospital, Idi- Araba, on Monday.

They were protesting the sacking of 16, 000 resident medicos in the country by the Federal Government.

The medicos, who wore white lab coats, were visually perceived carrying placards with inscriptions, such as: ‘Sack of 16,000 resident medicos, death sentence for Nigerians!’; ‘Sack Ebola, not medicos!’; ‘Sack Boko Haram, not doctors’; ‘Sack Chukwu, not medicos!’; ‘No to casualisation of medico!’, among others.

The state Chairman of the association, Dr. Tope Ojo, who addressed journalists at LUTH, verbalized that the sacking of resident medicos in all federal edifying hospitals in the country could lead to the collapse of the health sector.

Ojo noted that the NMA would not resume any negotiation with the Federal Government until the directive is unconditionally inverted.

He verbally expressed, “The immediate reversal of the sacking of all the 16,000 resident medicos is the minimal demand for us to resume verbalizes with the Federal Government.

“It is not acceptable to us and we will do all we can to forfend our vocation. They signed several acquiescents with the Academic Staff Union of Universities and did not consummate them. That is what they are doing with us. They verbalize they have met 90 per cent of our authoritative ordinances, but it is erroneous. We will not relent until we have put things in place in our hospitals.”

The medicos withal called for the immediate abstraction of the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, whom they alleged to have bamboozled the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan into taking the decision.

Ojo verbally expressed, “We are vigilant that this is an endeavor by the minister to casualise the doctor’s employment, as Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, has done in Lagos State. We will resist it. The President has been given an erroneous counsel. No nation can survive by discarding its specialist medicos.”

Resident medicos are specialist medicos in training in edifying hospitals in Nigeria.

It would be recalled that the Federal Government issued a directive on August 14, verbally expressing that residency training programme for medicos in its tertiary hospital be suspended.