By Emmanuel Edukugho

What started as a three-day warning strike over sundry issues whereby government issued queries to them and also ordered that they appear before a disciplinary panel to explain their action, the medical doctors in Lagos State-owned hospitals then embarked on indefinite strike which led to their mass dismissal, as both parties are now in court.

The Lagos State Government, in a severe response announced it has sacked 788 doctors in one fell swoop for embarking on an “illegal strike”. It was the crescendo of the persistent face-off between the doctors under the platform of Medical Guild led by Dr. Olumuyiwa Odusote and the state government headed by Governor Babatunde Fashola.

The doctors demanded for full implementation of the Consolidated Medical Salary Scale (CONMESS) and other allowances which they alleged that government was not willing to pay. The sudden strike paralysed healthcare delivery services leading to untimely death of many people.

The causalities would have been higher as most of the state-owned public hospitals were filled with patients and sick persons unattended to, but for the quick response by the government which temporarily recruited hundreds of doctors to the rescue.

Many people were baffled by the industrial action of the resident doctors who seemed to have betrayed their Hippocratic oath taken when they qualified as medical doctors.

The oath enjoins them to “do everything possible to preserve human life and to maintain high working standards.”
Sampled opinions of Nigerians point to the non-challant attitude of doctors who do not show sufficient adequate care for their patients. In several instances, patients had been at the mercy of doctors, many of them lacking the milk of human kindness and slow in responding to emergency calls.

An empty ward in a Lagos - owned hospital due to the strike by the medical doctors

Against professional ethics, they insist on payment or some forms of gratification when patients come for treatment, divert government drugs to their private clinics, direct people elsewhere for treatment, engaging in flourishing private practice at the expense of government hospitals where they are working. Doctors are not however, immuned from the economic hardship other people are experiencing, including  professionals such as engineers, teachers, lawyers, architects, journalists, to mention just a few.

So why won’t the doctors agitate for better pay, enhanced emoluments, conducive working environments, improved allowances and other things that could inspire and motivate them towards higher productivity. To ease the agony of patients who had to bear the brunt of the strike, senior medical doctors were drafted to take care of pregnant women at the point of giving birth and people taken to  accident and emergency units. It is just impossible to replace all the 788 dismissed doctors.

All pleas and entreaties to the striking doctors to sheath their swords and be compassionate fell on deaf ears. Government was too hasty in sacking the doctors. Our checks roughly revealed that from 2008 to date, the salaries of doctors in Lagos State have doubled; Lagos State doctors are the highest paid in Nigeria, earning far more than their colleagues in other states. It is believed rightly that Lagos State is implementing the consolidated medical salary scale in full.

It’s an open fact verifiable that new doctors known as House Officers earn about N174,000 monthly, while consultants go home with about N802,000 excluding teaching allowance, although the doctors have complained about high taxation on their earnings.

It has been noticed by all and sundry that doctors’ strike have become a regular occurrence in recent times and therefore the need to stem this ugly tide seemed paramount. “Most of the strikes were believed to be politically sponsored and motivated, a ploy calculated to distract the focus of the Lagos State government,” according to a statement signed by Dr. Smart Ofonyiri, President of the National Council of Christian Youth Societies and Evangelist Daniel Bamgbola,  its General Secretary.

After the sack of 788 doctors,they were given eviction notice to leave their official quarters within two days. But governor Fashola later directed that the action to forcefully evict the doctors be stopped having realised it contravened the State Tenancy Law which he signed sometime in 2011.

In another development, the National Association of Resident Doctors of Nigeria (NARD) condemned the sack of the 788 doctors, saying it would not hesitate to initiate legitimate actions to protect its members if the outcome of the intervention by the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) was not successful.

NARD described the action of Lagos State Government as unwarranted, unexpected of a democratic administration and smacked of executive recklessness and extreme high handedness of tyrannical proportion. Also, the two major political parties have jumped into the fray between the doctors and government.

For the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South-West, the decision to sack the doctors was dictatorial, insensitive, inhuman and evil, adding that, no responsible government will allow doctors in its service to resort to strike all the time, not minding the effects on the masses. In its own reaction, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), said the doctors went on strike often and warned that the health of Lagos State residents should not be compromised on the pursuit of “restricted group interests.”

As if in a hurry, the doctors failed to follow due process in declaring the strike. The Lagos State Resident Doctors Association did not file the statutory period of time of notice to their employers  which should expire before embarking on the strike. The government either did not give the required notice to terminate the doctors appointment or pay something in lieu of notice.

Moreso, the doctors did not file their petition before the National Industrial Court for determination. It was like putting the cart before the horse when they later approached the court for relief. This is unfortunate although the decision of the court could be in their favour and the dismissal quashed, nulled and voided.

In the history of industrial actions in any developing nation, the mass sack of 788 doctors could be the highest in a profession regarded as elitist, and the most sought after. Many countries cannot boast of such number of doctors in their healthcare system. It could lead to a brain drain of medical doctors to other parts of the world looking for such skilled personnel.

The Lagos State Government may have acted on bad advice because it was wrong to sack the doctors without thoroughly exhausting all the available avenues and means to resolve the dispute. The Federal Government has intervened raising the possibility of settling the matter in the interest of the people now suffering.