The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has spoken out against the proposed five-year mandatory service requirement for medical and dental practitioners.
A bill requiring doctors to practise in the country for at least five years before receiving a full licence passed second reading in the House of Representatives last Thursday.
Worried by the mass exodus of healthcare workers leaving Nigeria for greener pastures abroad, Honourable Ganiyu Johnson (APC/Lagos) who sponsored the bill said it seeks to amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act 2004, to address the brain drain in the Nigerian health sector.
But speaking on Wednesday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, the NMA President, Dr Ojinma Uche, said the bill is not the solution to the pending crisis in the nation’s healthcare system.
He advised the Federal Government to address the root cause of the problem by urgently addressing the welfare of medical practitioners as well as tackle the security challenges that they grapple with.
Uche also lamented that some doctors have been the target of kidnappers and armed robbers, coupled with the low remuneration for them.
“That is not the solution. You will discourage young medical students from reading Medicine. My own fear now is that it may have spooked the doctors that will be planning to leave in a year to start leaving immediately, before they are clamped down,” he stated.
“If you now decide that Nigerian doctors cannot have full or permanent licence for five years after graduation, automatically, you have made them house officers for five years.”
The bill, if passed into law, will mandate medical and dental practitioners trained in the country to practice for at least five years before they are granted a full licence.