Guardian

SIR: The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in its recent advertorial in the dailies commended the President and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for abandoning the report presented by the Presidential Committee on a harmonious work relationship among health workers and professional groups in the health sector. According to the NMA “The report was evidently premeditated, biased, unjust and extremely jaundiced with the unholy intent to serve some determined ends”.

The NMA also went on to describe current agitations by health workers as “Fissiparous tendencies and the re-current threats of strike action as uncalled for”. The NMA it will be seen has consistently embarked on campaigns of calumny with distortion and misrepresentation of facts! Well, I think the president has only succeeded in igniting more fire in the health sector. How can Mr. President think that a honourable Justice of the level of Justice Bello will go to the extent of doing a dishonourable job? Did they not look at his credentials before appointing him to chair the panel? In fact this has shown that the president is dancing and dinning with the doctors while the Minister of Health is the chief cook.

The president seems not to understand the far-reaching implications of his decision and that it will mean that peace will continue to elude the sector. The NMA or doctors in Nigeria are the most selfish professional group in the world. For them to describe the report as premeditated, biased, etc leaves so much to be desired, perhaps because the report did not favour them. The doctors still insist on master-servant relationship in the health sector without looking at the calibre of professionals in the sector. Most professionals in the health sector have Masters and doctorate degrees and are very versatile in their chosen fields. They have made significant contribution to health through acclaimed researches and findings.

The doctors believe they should control the nursing services, pharmaceutical services, laboratory services, the administrative machineries, etc and by so doing they have taken over the jobs of nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists, administrators and putting less time to their core duties of clinical care and treatment.

The self-interest agenda of Nigerian doctors knows no bound! They have taken over all aspects of the health service determining the fate of other health professionals. They sit on government directives in the respective teaching hospitals and medical centres. Thus a report that tends to right these wrongs is viewed as “biased”. Justice Bello is a lawyer with superior argument and I believe the panel would have listened tentatively.

• Joshua Anunibe,

Lagos.