EXCLUSIVE: Wike ‘Unwilling’ to Pay Recently-Employed Abuja Health Workers as Another Exodus Looms
- For decades, the challenges facing Nigeria's healthcare system have been well-documented, leading to a decline in both the quality and availability of doctors within the country
- According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 2,000 Nigerian doctors emigrate annually to hotspots like the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada
- As they work to save lives, doctors who spoke to Legit.ng bemoaned bad working conditions in the FCT
Legit.ng journalist, Ridwan Adeola Yusuf, has over 9 years of experience covering public journalism.
FCT, Abuja - Health workers in Abuja have expressed sadness over the alleged unwillingness of the federal capital territory administration (FCTA) to pay salary arrears, wage awards, and skipping allowances.
Legit.ng reports that the FCTA is a ministry that administers the Nigerian capital city and is headed by Nyesom Wike, the incumbent FCT minister.
Source: UGC
Dozens of health workers disclosed that they have petitioned Wike and relevant permanent secretaries (PS) in the FCT over months of unpaid arrears, citing financial hardship and frustration it has brought upon them.
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The workers, which include doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and lab scientists, said they feel abandoned, demotivated, and exhausted, with many of them struggling to feed their families and pay bills.
Legit.ng reached out to three concerned health workers for comments on the development. Due to the fear of victimisation and public service rules repercussions, two of them agreed to voice out their dispiriting experience on condition of anonymity while one preferred not to speak at all.
One of the affected workers explained to Legit.ng:
“We were employed by the FCTA around May 2023. Although we all have different dates of resumption, we were told in FCTA that it takes three months to process our details and start getting paid. But that wasn’t so in our case. Majority of us worked for six months straight without getting paid, not even the first 28-day working allowance.
"We managed and pulled it through and kept coming to work unpaid. Most of us are running from one financial loan to another just to keep up.”
Subsequently, the health workers started getting their monthly salaries (November 2023 to date), but the arrears and other allowances remain unpaid.
The disgruntled female health worker continued:
“Through our association, we have written letters to the FCT minister and the minister of state for the FCT (Mariya Mahmud), but it is unclear if it has reached the two cabinet members of President Bola Tinubu. Nothing fruitful came out of it.
“We kept going to different offices in Abuja, including approaching the office of the head of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), but no result.”
On May 29, 2024, while President Tinubu was marking one year in office, the aggrieved health workers “met with the FCTA permanent secretary (PS)”, according to Legit.ng’s source.
She said:
“The perm sec came out and addressed us. He initially said it is against the civil service rule to protest, that we are privileged to be employed. He concluded by saying they would look into the matter and we would be paid by 29th June (2024). Unfortunately, no payment until now.”
In the same vein, a doctor who works in the FCT hospital management board stated that he was ‘shocked’ when he received his first pay.
He told Legit.ng:
“It was the seventh month that they eventually paid. It was a shock, in the sense that the arrears were not paid. They just paid one month, and that is how they’ve been doing to date.
“That is to say, the majority of us are being owed six months, from May to October 2023.”
Alleged unfairness in civil service
Furthermore, earlier in 2024, doctors under FCTA were paid the arrears of a 25 percent salary increment, but for reasons not known, the doctors that were employed in late April 2023 up until September 2023 were strangely omitted.
The unhappy medical doctor said:
“By the time they now paid the nursing cadre, those that were employed with us were all paid. The same thing to pharmacists. So, we were so shocked.
“As I speak, it is not only the six months arrears that they are owing us, the 25 percent salary increment which took effect from June 2023 down to November of that year, we saw nothing too.”
One of the sources who spoke with Legit.ng said all necessary preparations have been completed, adding that it was Wike who, she learnt, was delaying.
Poor working conditions have pushed doctors overseas
An average of 200 resident doctors in Nigeria relocated abroad monthly between 2021 and 2023, seeking better pay and improved working conditions, according to a report by The Associated Press.
Their positions are left vacant, further worsening the relatively affordable healthcare services in public hospitals in the country of over 200 million people.
The WHO reports that Nigeria has a ratio of four doctors to 10,000 patients as of 2021. However, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) noted that their records show a ratio of two doctors to 10,000 patients generally, which would make Nigeria’s doctor staffing one of the worst globally.
The United Kingdom (UK) is the preferred choice destination for many Nigerian doctors moving abroad, the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) said.
In the year leading to September 2022, Nigerian nationals were the second-largest category to receive the UK “skilled worker - health and care” visa, accounting for 8,520, or 14% of the total, government statistics show.
If left unaddressed, the current situation experienced under the FCTA may push more doctors to flee overseas.
Meanwhile, when reached for comments via telephone, Anthony Ogunleye, the FCTA director of press, declined to respond to Legit.ng's inquiry on the issue. According to him, "I haven't met you one-on-one before, and a couple of times, you pressmen have misquoted and misrepresented us."
FG approves N25k allowance for doctors
Earlier, Legit.ng reported that the FG approved the payment of a N25,000 peculiar allowance for medical and dental doctors in hospitals, medical centres, and clinics within the federal public service.
This was disclosed in a statement by the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the national salary and wages commission who mentioned that the allowance is to be paid from the overhead budget.
Proofreading by James, Ojo Adakole, journalist and copy editor at Legit.ng.
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Source: Legit.ng
