Medical Strike; President Jonathan Dancing
Etighi With Our Lives By Fejiro Oliver
Posted By Editor On 25th August, 2013. Under
NEWS
It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all
physicians graduate in the bottom half of their
class – Unknown
Just when I was about getting ready for my
afternoon games; an sms rushed in, which got
me thinking that the medical war will go on
nonstop until the citizen and the president do
something about it by laying off the minister of
Health, Mr. Chukwu Onyebuchi or acceding to
JOHESU request. I wasn’t thinking because it
was the first sms of the day over my last write up
on the medical strike.
READ: Nigeria Medical Workers Strike; Let Us All
Die! By Fejiro Oliver
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t among the first 100
sms and definitely not among the over 480 mails
received at that moment, but because I
concluded that I have finally known the reason
for the power tussle in the volatile health sector.
The message came thus: “Doctors are the
academics in the health sector, while your so
called health workers-many of them-semi-educa
ted are the non academic staff. In all jobs, only
certain cadre of workers become CEO. For
instance, the academics in the university, the
engineers in NNPC, Judges in judiciary. That is
why doctors are CMD in hospitals. You claimed
you are a journalist. Perhaps a secretary is the
EDITOR of your newspaper! You are one of those
jealous of doctors. Your article revealed that.” He
ended. This is definitely what they are made to
believe during their housemanship and
internship. If this is so; the medical sector is
dead. With supposed physicians that think like
this, the medical rofession is in peril. Let’s
analyze.
All over the world, there are only three group of
medical profession(I stand to be corrected) that
are ascribed the title ‘doctor’ namely; doctor of
medicine, doctor of physiotherapy and doctor of
dentistry, but this piece is narrowed down to
doctor of medicine. When I set out to write
‘Nigeria Medical Workers strike; let us all die’, I
wasn’t expecting the kind of controversy and
buzz as it has generated home and abroad.
Certainly I was threading where angels fear to
tread as revealed by Nigerian Medical
Association (NMA) members who have called
and sent mails. Their various comment
suggested that I was threading on a dangerous
path and should not be the one to open the
public eye to the politicking in the health. Sorry
my dear family members who are part of NMA;
the truth must be told. Our dear friend called
other medical graduates “semi-educated’, a
pitiable summary of their reason for going on
strike, so he sees it. Can a pharmacist who
manufactures the drugs which they in the doctor
category prescribe be a semi illiterate, and yet
they ask the public to take the drugs? Can a
radiographer who do all the scan work in the
hospital be an illiterate and yet they the so called
‘doctors’ begin treatment, while dependant on
the scan produced by the radiographer? Is the
medical lab scientist an illiterate when he
diagnosis the cause of an ailment through his
series of test carried out by him that the
physicians used in working? Is the nurse truly
semi- literate when a patient hope of recovery
depends on him/her? Bring them on; is the
optometrist a semi illiterate when patients with
various eye problems seek his medical solution?
Who then is the semi illiterate; the man who calls
himself a doctor but cannot begin treatment until
a test is carried out, or the man who diagnoses
and refers the patient to any of the three
doctors? Is it the man who forgets a scissors or
cotton wool inside a patient body, stitch it up
only for the patient to die later? Let the public
judge.
I don’t know the school our doctors went to but
the schools in Nigeria and abroad that I have
been to bears school of health sciences, faculty
of health sciences or college of medicine and all
the various medical departments are in these
departments. It’s befuddling to say that an
insignificant department that cannot operate
alone be allowed to be a CMD. A professor of
medicine who called from the USA to lend his
voice aptly noted that hospitals are left in the
hands of health administrator not clinicians. Can
someone sing to the heavens to this ‘doctors’
that they have no business heading a hospital
and if they should head, that any of the medical
profession who is most qualified should head.
That a department of radiology, medical
laboratory scientist (which the media
erroneously refer to as medical laboratory
technologist), optometry etc is headed by a
doctor is an aberration, a misdemeanor and
oddity. What then is the use of studying such
course when the practitioner cannot get to the
peak of his career? Let all medical departments
be headed by a graduate of such; not a fellow
who did only few months of residency in it. You
don’t force leadership when a people reject it.
The various departments have refused to have
MBBS graduate as their heads. Must they shed
blood or keep this strike going for all our loved
ones to die before their call is heeded?
In the college of engineering, there exist various
departments, but the civil engineers have never
laid claim that they alone be allowed to head the
ministry of works, neither has the building
engineers say to the structural engineer that it is
their prerogative to head ministry of housing. The
petrochemical engineer has not told the chemical
engineer or petroleum engineer that they alone
be allowed to head NNPC. The land surveyor has
not told the estate surveyor that they alone be
made minister for land survey? Has the quantity
surveyor told the land surveyor that they should
be allowed to be made surveyor general of the
federation? NO! They all know that they are all
engineers and surveyors, but designated
differently for the smooth operation of the job.
Where therein lies this show of pomposity by a
minute member of the medical profession that
they are the owners of medicine.
The public may not know it, but now they must!
The three profession bearing ‘doctors’ constitute
only 30 percent of the entire clinical staff in the
hospital with doctor of medicine producing a
paltry 12 percent. That a group of 12 percent be
allowed to Lord over 70 percent qualified and
worthy medical workers is an unforgivable sin
and injustice to mankind. The academics which
are the brain behind the country do not have only
graduates of educational degrees as Vice
Chancellors, but anybody who is a lecturer no
matter the field of study can be appointed. The
Judiciary which the doctors of medicine want to
emulate is the most professional field in the
world, where universities operate a department
as a faculty. Yet they have never fought each
other that an international law and jurisprudence
judge should not be made a minister of justice.
They have never asked the President to allow
only law school graduates of criminal laws to be
made an attorney general, neither have they
argued that only civil law graduate be made a
chief judge. Anyone of the law profession is
allowed to aspire to be a judge without
hindrances. What then is wrong with our MBBS
doctors?
No medical profession is entirely independent; all
of them are allied to one another; support staff to
each other. Let me tell you an experience. Five
years ago, my cousin who is a doctor of
medicine took me to see his friend who is a
doctor of physiotherapy and was about to wed in
two weeks time. There in the hospital, I heard his
patient, an elderly man telling him that if he can
make him walk before his wedding day; he, the
patient will surprise him. I don’t know how he did
it, but before the end of the two weeks, the man
was hale and hearty, walking very well. I bet you
can never guess this, but the patient was a
consultant cardiologist! Yes, a consultant
cardiologist who has given hope on life brought
back to ‘life’ by another field of medicine. He did
make good his promise as he was a major
sponsor of the wedding.
As I write, in Ahmadu Bello University in a unit
(which I won’t disclose) lies a consultant
pediatrician who has been sustained on
physiotherapy for the past ten years, after a
successful surgery, with many more in the cue
daily for treatment and yet his NMA colleagues
will want the world to believe that they are
indispensable, when actually they contribute the
lowest of medical delivery. I know of hundreds
NMA members whose hope of living lies in the
nurses, DPT and optometrist; yet they refuse to
allow professionalism reign in the health sector.
When doctors of medicine go on strike, they want
my likes to pen reports that will cause
government to hear and attract public sympathy,
yet when other medical unions go on same
strike; their national president term it sabotage,
urging her members to be on duty. They want the
media to be silent about it, forgetting that NMA
strike does not affect every patient as there are
always skeletal works going on by consultants
and house officers. But how wrong he is. In the
field of medicine; you are a clinical staff, non
clinical staff or administrative staff. If this is so,
what manner of argument are they propounding
that medicine practice is akin to a house being
built, where other staff are laborers’ while they
are the engineers. It doesn’t just blend.
Fejiro Oliver is always paid by agents, so they
shout. When I wrote advocating for fair trial to
Ibori, they shouted to high heavens that I was
paid millions by Ibori hatchet men; when I wrote
the APC story; APC chieftains screamed that PDP
is using me as their new media man. When I
wrote against my own constituency, NUJ, for
engaging in unprofessionalism; they say Fejiro
was being used by disgruntled elements and
when I broke the Dafinone’s secret daughter
reports, his hangers-on raised the roof that the
secret daughter, Elizabeth Dafinone has paid me
in pounds since she resides in London. And now
that I have written on the JOHESU/NUPTAM
strike, NMA members allege that I have been
paid and being used by Medical Lab Scientist
and Nurses to heat the polity and cause the sack
of Minister Onyebuchi. If truly I’m being paid for
all the countless reports and stories I have
written for over a decade; I should be flying in my
own private jet, chartering private planes
whenever I go travelling, not boarding a business
class.
Reports emanating from various newspaper
reports, says that patients are already dying,
with many more being evacuated to private
hospitals; yet the doctors are there, helpless with
no solution to the cure as they are handicapped.
Will a doctor of medicine go to the physio
department to treat a case he has never seen all
his life apart from reading about them (that is if
he has ever heard about it). I write with the spirit
of truth and the various media publishers in
Nigeria, London, USA, Ghana, Vienna,
Netherlands etc publish in the spirit of truth.
Nigerians have personally asked that I express
their gratitude to them for being a vessel of
information and making open what the ordinary
masses never knew. I do not just write as a
journalist, but also an activist, who advocates for
the right things to be done and workers given
their due benefits.
Mr. Minister, Nigerians are the ones dying not
your children, they are the ones suffering, not
your immediate relatives. These medical workers
you know as I know do not truly feel the pains as
the electorate, but must they all die before you
tender your resignation honorably? To you Mr.
President, we know you don’t give a damn, but
don’t you also care that mothers will be made
widows, husbands made widowers and parents
who probably have their only child in the hospital
now will become childless? Dear Jonathan, don’t
you care for the loss of loved ones that will occur
as you dance etighi with lives of Nigerians who
you swore to protect? Is the continous stay of
your Minister of Health more important than the
hundreds of lives of Nigerians that are already
dying? The court appeal made by the Minister is
uncalled for, wicked and delay tactics, aimed at
crucifying the citizenry. By the way, what were
you thinking when you appointed the minister of
health and minister of health (state) from the
same NMA? Were you thinking the medical
workers are fools who you can ride on and get
away with? No, dear President! These are
professionals who spent years in the university
more than you; these are the men when my
grandma had back pain that the Onyebuchi
group referred us to, these are the men who
without them, my late grand dad would have
being buried as a blind man. It is these men who
I rush to for test and diagnosis when I feel
uneasy. Oh Jona; these are the very people who
when our relations have gone to sleep, leaving
the sick in the ward; they in their glowing white
uniforms take care of them while the NMA
members go to the call room, sit on the sofa,
crossing their legs, sipping tea and watching
DSTV.
They have not asked for much but harmonization
in the health sector as is done all over the world.
Nigerians are saying, ‘grant them their prayers
that we may not die’. Or have they not elected
you and should be able to tell you what to do? If
you could sack the defense minister and national
security adviser, despite the days of Boko Haram
insurgence, who then is the minister of health
that you cannot show the way out, due to his
nepotism, favoritism, high handedness and
incompetence.
No, I refuse to be part of a cheated generation a
decayed history and a partaker of oppression. I
refuse to be tagged a failure by my unborn
generation, who will question my role in this
moment of history, such as this. Tomorrow, it
just may be my great grandchild fighting this; it
might even be yours. Mr. President, this azonto
dance with the medical profession is enough; this
etighi dance has gone on too long. There is
blood on the dance floor already and the cries of
the innocent patient who may have been saved
by your quick action is ascending and your name
is being mentioned. When the day of reckoning
comes; what would you answer for these blood?
These little things matter….

ALL I HAVE TO TELL YOU IS ,MAY YOUR DAYS BE LONG! MAY EVERYBODY THAT IS SEEKING YOUR DOWNFALL CRASHLAND AT YOUR FEET. WHEN EVER YOUR ENEMIES COME FOR YOUR HEAD THE LORD WILL RAISE A STANDARD AGAINST THEN. YOU HAVE SAID THE TRUTH AND FREE YOU SHALL BE.BE BLESSED

This tales by moonlight too long.