Two years ago, our president, on assumption of office, announced fuel subsidy removal and just like that, we entered one chance.
The effects of the policy started gradually and before long, we all began to feel the pinch in our shoes. The queues, the cost, the collective grimace of a nation grinding to a halt. In the hospital, we felt it acutely. The daily struggle became a calculus of survival. A colleague of mine, a brilliant paediatrician dedicated to saving our nation’s children, made a pragmatic decision. He parked his car, a relic of better days, and resurrected an old motorcycle from the depths of his garage. It was his new, cost-effective chariot to and from the hospital.
This decision was born out of necessity, a quiet sacrifice for the privilege of serving a country that often forgets its servants. One evening, after a gruelling 24-hour call duty, exhausted and navigating the poorly lit streets on his rickety motorcycle, he was hit by a reckless Keke Napep rider. The result was a fractured left leg, surgery, and a mandated six-week absence from the wards. For six weeks, the children under his care lost their doctor. For six weeks, his family lived in anxiety. And for six weeks, the system he risked his safety to serve barely blinked.
This story is not an anomaly; it is a symptom. It is the prelude to the painful but inevitable decision the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has been forced to take: a total, comprehensive, and indefinite strike, commencing on November 1, 2025.
When the news breaks, the public narrative will, as always, be quick to condemn the doctors. “How can they abandon their posts?” “It is inhuman!” The government’s press releases will paint a picture of unreasonable unions holding the nation to ransom. But behind the headlines and the hollow podiums lies a truth we can no longer sugar-coat: this strike is not an act of aggression; it is the final, desperate act of self-preservation by a profession being systematically bled dry.
The communiqué from NARD’s Extraordinary National Executive Council meeting is not a mere list of demands; it is a damning autopsy of a public health system in its terminal stages. Let us move beyond the abstract and look at the concrete injustices that have brought us here. In the communique, resident doctors have itemised nineteen issues that need to be addressed.
Don’t worry, I will not bore you with all the technical issues (as I am not the spokesperson of NARD), but I will highlight the key grievances of resident doctors across the country.
We are talking about a government that, with a straight face, has failed to fully settle arrears of five months from a salary review that was itself a delayed adjustment. They have watched as newly employed doctors have had their entry-level grades deliberately downgraded, leading to gross salary shortages from their very first day of service. Imagine a young doctor, fresh with passion, discovering that their pay check is a fraction of what it should be, all while battling the cost of living in urban centres. This is not an oversight; it is a policy of demoralisation.
Furthermore, the government’s failure to pay the 2024 Accoutrement Allowance and other promotion arrears dating back to 2021 is a special kind of cruelty. It is a deliberate act that subjects us and our families to economic hardship, forcing choices like my colleague’s trading a car for a dangerous motorcycle just to make ends meet.
But the crisis is not just about money; it is about life and death. The communiqué highlights the “prolonged and inhumane” working hours doctors are subjected to, a practice that “poses serious risks to physicians’ well-being and patient safety.” This is not an exaggeration. The current system, where a doctor can be on duty for stretches that span several days, is a recipe for disaster. A sleep-deprived, mentally exhausted physician is a danger to themselves and to the patient on the table. The government’s refusal to enforce civilised work-hour limits is not just exploitative; but a direct threat to public health and safety.
Compounding this is the “catastrophic manpower shortage” caused by the government’s refusal to implement a simple one-for-one replacement policy. For every doctor that leaves the country for greener pastures (Japa), they are not replaced. Politicians think that by increasing the quota of medical schools or increasing the number of medical schools, they have replaced the number of doctors that have left, No! How can one medical student replace a fully trained nephrologist in his place of work? Do you know the number of years it takes to train a consultant nephrologist? How many medical students will replace the nephrologist that left? And in what distant future? What about the ‘now’?
As for the doctors that remain in Nigeria, their workload multiplies, fuelling burnout and ensuring that the cycle of exhaustion continues. We are simultaneously overworked and understaffed, a paradox that can only exist in a system teetering on the brink of collapse.
Add to this the casualisation of our profession through abusive locum arrangements, the exclusion of house officers from the civil service scheme, the non-payment of specialist allowances, and the frustrating bureaucratic bottlenecks with our postgraduate colleges, and you have a perfect storm of discontent.
So, when NARD declares an indefinite strike, understand what it is. It is the collective cry of a workforce that has been pushed to the edge. It is the final resort after “repeated extensions of ultimatums as a show of goodwill” were met with utter disregard. We have watched the government renege on Memoranda of Understanding, ignore Collective Bargaining Agreements, and treat our legitimate concerns with a profound lack of political will.
My colleague with the fractured leg has since returned to work, a metal implant in his leg a permanent reminder of his sacrifice. But what of the fractures in the system? Who will fix those? The strike is our attempt to force that repair. It is a painful, last-ditch effort to save the Nigerian health sector from total implosion and to demand the dignity and respect that every Nigerian doctor deserves.
