Medical doctors
In 2022 alone, according to an online publication, over 700 workers in the employment of Lagos State government had resigned their appointments in the last five months to take up lucrative offers in Europe and America.
Particularly affected, according to the report , are the Ministries of Education and Health which are daily recording exodus of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory technologists and teachers in large droves.
Officials in the state’s civil service commission then had claimed the exodus had negatively affected the already fragile health and education sectors, which suffer from shortage of personnel and facilities. Since then, many states have lost vital manpower to mass exodus of professionals abroad.
As alarming as the figure is, it does not affect those that left between 2018 and 2021.
It is worthwhile to state here that the Lagos conundrum is not an isolated case. In fact, all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory are not immuned to the daily loss of experienced hands. For instance, earlier this year, security agencies were used to disperse large crowd of doctors who thronged recruitment centres by foreign countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc.
Unvalued, underpaid and unsecure in their fatherland, Nigeria’s professionals are daily leaving our shores to seek greener pastures abroad.
According to the World Health Organisation, there are currently approximately four physicians per 10,000 population in Nigeria, as against the organisation’s recommended doctor-to-patient ratio of 1 physician to 1,000 people.
Also, the British General Medical Council, said 805 medical doctors migrated to the UK between July and December 2021. This translates to 134 trained doctors a month, 33 per week and four a day. As of 2024, the figures may have quadrupled.
This figure is for the UK alone where 8,178 medical doctors of Nigerian origin were practising as at December 2021.
Figures released by the British Nursing and Midwifery Council also showed that from March 2016 to March 2021, 15,049 Nigerian nurses moved to the UK.
This translates to 3,009 annually, 228 per month, 57 per week and 8 per day nigerian nurses that abandoned the country to serve in the UK health system. This is alarming.
While the health sector is reeling and begging for attention, the nation’s education sector has not done better. For instance, based on the National Policy on Education, the teacher-pupil ratio should be 1:40.
However, the average ratio is exceeded in most schools, with the national average teacher-pupil ratio standing at 1:70.
These malformations, apart from puting the educational future of millions of Nigerian children of school age in jeopardy, has also exposed most Nigerians, especially the masses to needless health risks and avoidable deaths.
Out of school and unable to make something meaningful out of their lives, these out-of-school pupils are daily turning to misfits and nuisance to the society. They have become tools in the hands of religious extremists and criminal warlords.
The unceremonious exits of professionals is also coming at a huge cost to the country. Educating health professionals and teachers is an expensive enterprise for any developing country.
According to a conservative estimate, it takes about N30 million to train a medical doctor through medical school and N7 million to train a teacher in a university.
What this implies is that while the government subsidies the tuition of its professionals through the university, the nation rarely benefits from their services before they move abroad.
The reality is stark and frightening. While our hospitals have become mere consulting rooms and death traps, our children are turning to undesirable elements.
This anomaly has marred the polity for decades and ought to be reversed as quickly as possible with holistic programmes and practical policy implementations as done in civilized climes.
Pretending as if all is well will be tantamount to sitting on a keg of gunpowder. The trend, if allowed to fester, will sooner than later turned catastrophe for the nation.
We admonish the government to stop living in denial and wake up to its duty of serving the people who elected it into office. However, there is the argument that the development is beneficial to the country because these professionals export their skill and repatriate foreign exchange to the country, which helps to boost the naira.
A survey report by NOIPolls and Nigerian Health Watch on the ‘Emigration of Nigerian Medical Doctors’ highlights several contributory factors to the lingering brain drain, with the most common being high taxes and deductions from salary, poor salaries, huge knowledge gap, and poor quality of practice and insecurity
To address these challenges, the government should create a conducive environment that will ensure job satisfaction among its dissatisfied workforce.
Government must also provide the needed infrastructure such as good transport systems, affordable and functional education, electricity, stable energy in addition to good health care system.
The issue of insecurity should also be tackled headlong as no professional would be comfortable where his colleagues are being targeted by kidnappers who often kill them despite their families and colleagues paying the ransom demanded.
Government should ensure proper funding of the two critical sectors. It can do this by blocking leakages in government to save more funds for the expansion of the health and education budgets.
While more facilities and modern equipment should be provided in public hospitals, modern classrooms and teaching aids should be provided in all public schools.
Government should strive to meet the 26 percent recommended by UNESCO. This is about N3.5 trillion allocated annually to the education sector by the Federal Government in the last six years which is less than 10% of the budget is a far cry from the ideal. It should be improved on.
Welfare of its essential and emergency workers should be made paramount. For instance, the salaries allowances of these workers should be reviewed upward, no matter how minimal.
While this will not immediately stop the brain drain, it will be a starting point and will represent government’s good faith to meet the workers’ demands midway.
NATIONAL WAVES urge Nigerian professionals running away to reconsider their plans of abandoning the country.
Teachers and health professionals, like all other professionals, are trained in the nation’s tuition free universities.
Therefore, they have an obligation to give back to the country. The country cannot continue training them for other countries free of charge. This comes at a cost. And the sooner they realise this, the better for everyone.
