ATTENTION – NYSC
ATTENTION MDCN
ATTENTION You. Please pass this on to the aforementioned if you know them.
I'm a medical doctor who just finished my internship and I am supposed to serve with the present batch of the 2015 National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
Before internship, we doctors are given provisional registration and are issued temporary practicing licences with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN). These expire at the end of 24 months within which we are to find internship placement and are to be exchanged for the permanent registration and permanent practicing licences upon completion of the internship program.
Now the problem: for reasons best known to it, the MDCN takes forever to process these permanent practicing licences (ranging from 3 months to years depending on if you have "legs" that can hasten the process for you, and trust me, "legs" cost money). Alas, for those of us going to serve they have issued a directive to NYSC telling them not to accept doctors without permanent licences even though we have evidence of completion of internship and receipts of payment for the permanent licences (to the tune of #31,000 to #51,000).
Now doctors are being driven from the NYSC camps to go and 'look for' their licences, made to travel all the way from their various states of deployment to the MDCN offices in Lagos and Abuja. Yet it is not our fault that the council takes months to do what should normally be done in maximum of a week (people with really long legs get theirs processed in less than 2 days!).
Why does Nigeria make things hard for its own? You spend 8 years or more in pursuit of your medical certificate and the very Council that is supposed to protect you takes it upon itself to ridicule you before other bodies. Our contemporaries who studied other courses do not get sent home to look for what is not lost. What if in the process of travelling from Bayelsa to Lagos to Abuja to fetch this licence, someone has an accident? Many of us actually have been robbed on our way to and from these camps all in the quest of getting our permanent licences when our temporary ones have not yet expired.
Are we to spend some more months at home before going to serve just because the MDCN knows we should have our licences but refuses to process them on time? Passing through medical school and internship was grueling enough, will NYSC constitute additional stress for us doctors courtesy of MDCN?
This is an appeal to the Registrar of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria:
Kind Sir, please urgently review your directive to NYSC. Permit us access into our camps upon presentation of evidence of completion of housemanship and a receipt of payment for the permanent licence. Alternatively Sir, master lists containing the names of all doctors whose licences are still being processed can be circulated around NYSC Camps. Better yet sir, issue us letters stating that our licences are being processed. This is what the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) did and pharmacists are being allowed into camp. Please Sir, help your own, we are your students and junior colleagues striving so that we can be great like you someday.
Anybody that can help get this message across should kindly do so. Thank you so much in advance.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Ciroma Adekunle Chukwuma.
On behalf of all NYSC Doctors, 2015 Batch B set

I feel your pain , same situatuon with the Nursing and Midwifery council of Nigeria. This is a registration body where your license would have expired before you get it, just collect and start processing renewal again, you see Nurses begging to stay in camp even though they have provisional license just because your permanent license is not ready despite the huge amount of money paid to collect it. Nigeria my country, which way forward.

it's such an unfortunate situation the MDCN that is suppose to protect doctors create. I just hope somebody looks into this.

Why can't the medical council gives out a cover letter in lieu of the certificate just like the pharmacists council of Nigeria.It is not a rocket science.
I think you should notify medical council at the state level to this effect.

With this needless review, it seems doctors should be considering going for service one and half years after commencement of housemanship. Now that it is now even 2 batches a year, it might turn to 2 years for some innocent doctors.
MDCN!! This is not fair o...

Mod, lalasticlala, abeg u in d name of God, frontpage please...

Oops!!adekunle ciroma chukwuma is now a doctor...WAEC pls.change d name on d 1st page of ur question papers..lol...

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