KamalMarx:
It is no news that the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria(NMCN) recently released a memo that spelt out new guidelines for the verification of certificates and licences issued by the Council. The guidelines, which have created a lot of controversy in the past few days, have made the NMCN come under fire from various quarters. While a majority of the arguments that have been leveled against these new guidelines have been to label them as being too stringent, I strongly believe that apart from being stringent, the NMCN has actually strayed away from its core mandate by proposing such ludicrous guidelines for verification of the professionals it is supposed to oversee. A critical review of the law governing the NMCN reveals this.

The NMCN, was established by Decree No. 89, 1979 promulgated by the then Military government, which was later replaced by the Nursing and Midwifery (Registration etc) act. Cap. N143, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. Under this act, the roles of the overall governing body in the nursing profession was clearly spelt out. But before delving into details, there needs to be a proper definition of the major term involved in this controversy which is “Verification”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Verification is the “the act of showing or checking that something is true or accurate”. In the context of the prevailing contention, verification means ascertaining whether a certificate and licence presented by any individual has been issued by the NMCN to the person presenting it or not.

Those who wrote the NMCN Act were not oblivious to the fact that, from time to time, there will be a need for external bodies to correctly verify whether a presented licence or certificate was duly issued by the NMCN in order to combat fakes and quackery. The writers of the act foreseeing this, made the process of verification so seamless by stating under the Section 6, Subsection 2 of the Nursing and Midwifery Act, 2004 that “It shall be the duty of the registrar to prepare and maintain, in accordance with rules made by the Council under this section, a register of the names, addresses and approved qualifications, and of such other particulars as may be specified, of all persons who are entitled in accordance with the provisions of this Act to be registered as nurses or midwives and who apply in the specified manner to be so registered.” What this means in simple terms is that the registrar of the council is expected to have a register that contains names and addresses of persons qualified to practice both nursing and midwifery in Nigeria. So, in order to verify whether an individual is qualified to practice nursing or midwifery in Nigeria, it is a simple matter of cross-checking the register and ascertaining that, this individual is indeed a nursing or midwifery professional registered with the Council.

However, it is quite perplexing to discover that the registrar and the council claim not to understand this basic duty and cannot carry it out as stipulated by the law by having to rely on subjective third-party opinions for the verification of nursing professionals who are supposed to be on their register. The reliance on such opinions to verify the names that are supposed to be on their register only suggests that the registrar has suddenly grown incapacitated and cannot trust his own decision-making and judgment in maintaining such a register and verifying the names on it as he has previously done in a seamless fashion.

Furthermore, the reliance on these subjective third-party opinions to verify those that are supposed to be in the Council’s register as stipulated by the law also brings into question other processes that the Council has also laid out and relied upon to certify individuals to become nurses. For example, the Council’s exams for nurses and midwives have been the holy grail and gateway to entering into the nursing profession in Nigeria. The exams, which are seen as objective and standardized as they can be, are written by individuals seeking to be registered as nurses and midwives in the country a�er undergoing the required training process. Unfortunately, the sanctity of those exams and the preceding training is now being called into question because what the NCMN is saying is, passing the exams is not sufficient to be verified as a nurse, nor is having a Council-issued professional licence and certificate. You will also need to get subjective opinions from certain individuals - some of whom are not even members of the esteemed profession! Only then can your certificate be verified to be issued by the council. This means that the Council of a sudden no longer trusts the quality and veracity of their standardized exams or any of their laid-down processes including their supervisory role in making sure nursing training in Nigeria is one of calibre and class hence they will have to rely on biased assessments from various unregistered sources to carry out their duties. This only relates to a flagrant violation of the laws that govern the Council as stated in Section 1, Subsection 2, Paragraph A of the NMCN Act that “The Council shall be charged with the general duty of regulating and controlling the practice of the profession in all its ramifications”

The other issue that these new guidelines raise comes from the desk of NMCN itself in one of their objectives stated on their website which is, “Promoting and maintaining excellence in nursing education and practice in Nigeria”. Spending a minimum of 6 months to verify a certificate that was issued by the same body is no sign of promoting excellence, not even in a world where advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, 5G, biotechnology is keeping everyone on their toes. That single line item in the new guideline sent the nursing profession in Nigeria back to the Stone Age because not even the ancient Romans and Grecian empires had it this bad - verification of official documents in those pre-medieval empires was done in seconds! So why is the Council hellbent on taking the profession on a backward journey into the darkness of technological obscurity.

Having established that the new guidelines are not in accordance with the law governing the operation of the Council neither are they in agreement with the objectives of the Council. I strongly recommend that the Council’s leadership should review those guidelines and change them as appropriate, otherwise they will be in breach of the law and going against their objectives. If they cannot review it, then, the current leadership has no option but to step down from their position and allow individuals who will follow the law and maintain high standards in governing and administering the nursing profession in Nigeria to take over. We are not devoid of such people in the profession.

Finally, I call on all nurses and well-meaning individuals to stand up and speak against this violation of the law. Some nurses might claim it doesn’t affect them directly, but breaking the law is a slippery slope - today, it is verification, tomorrow it is another absurd memo. Let us all speak against this in one voice and save the profession from this steep cliff of lawlessness.