It's the third time in a year that Nigeria’s doctors have gone on strike over working conditions.
With high unemployment rates, inflation, ongoing insecurity in various parts of the country, and the COVID-19 pandemic on its issue list, the last thing Nigeria needs is a doctors’ strike.
But that is exactly what happened on Thursday as the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) began an indefinite strike to protest poor working conditions and pay.
Resident doctors in Nigeria are medical school graduates training and working as specialists, and make up almost half of all working doctors in the country. This is the third time the doctors have gone on strike in the past year.
This also comes as the country rolls out vaccines, acquired via the COVAX Facility — led by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — to frontline health workers and the elderly, before the rest of the population.
Why are Nigerian doctors on strike?
There are many reasons behind the strike. Nigeria’s health sector is severely underfunded which means there isn’t enough money to maintain public health infrastructure or improve health worker welfare.
This has led to doctors not only being paid poorly but thousands of doctors are also being owed as much as six months’ pay. Meanwhile, despite being frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19, the Nigerian government has only offered N5,000 (~$13) as hazard allowance to the doctors.
Doctors are also protesting lack of life insurance coverage and demanding that the government reviews the law regulating Postgraduate Medical Training (PMT) in Nigeria, which was established in 1979 and has never been reviewed, according to NARD.
But the biggest reason behind these frequent doctors' strikes, arguably, is the fact that the Nigerian government has constantly failed to honour previous agreements it has made with NARD in the past to resolve these issues.
“I am aware that out-of-pocket payment for health constitutes over 70% of total health expenditure,” said President Muhammadu Buhari at the opening of a new health care facility in 2017. “My presence here today demonstrates our administration’s commitment to put [the] health of Nigerians as a top priority.”