Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has declared that there is no going back on its planned nationwide strike from midnight to November 1, 2025, except the government reinstates its members that were unjustly dismissed, pays some of the arrears of allowances being owed and restores the value of membership certificates.
The doctors yesterday said that the government owed about 50,000 health workers across the country N38 billion in salaries in the past two years, excluding allowances.
The country, which had over 20,000 resident doctors 10 years ago, has barely 11,000 resident doctors, with 9,000 at the federal level, 1,500 in the private sector and about 500 at the state level, NARD lamented.
NARD President, Dr Mohammad Suleiman, who made this declaration while briefing journalists yesterday in Abuja, directed all resident doctors in federal and state tertiary health institutions nationwide to withdraw their services completely until the Federal Government and the affected state governments demonstrate genuine commitment to addressing the association’s demands.
Suleiman decried the Federal Government’s persistent failure to address the legitimate demands of the doctors, noting with utter disappointment that despite attempts at engaging it and repeated extension of ultimata as a show of goodwill, the government failed to respond adequately to their demands.
Observing that some of the arrears being owed by the government span over 10 years, he noted the government’s failure to review even the basic salary of doctors in the country for 16 years.
He said: “You cannot find a permanent secretary, a director, a minister, a member of the House of Representatives, a senator, even a member of the House of Assembly or a councillor at the ward level that is owed this way. But then, essential workers, like health workers and teachers, are being owed these allowances.
“Five presidents before me engaged the government in these conversations. I can tell you, on this issue, this is the first time we are declaring a total action after three years. The last time we had a strike that lasted more than 48 hours was three years ago. So, we were ready for that. We’ve been dialoguing for three years, and we have arrived here.”
He recalled that following the suspension of the warning strike on September 14, 2025, the last NARD Annual General Meeting (AGM), held in Katsina State, extended the two-week ultimatum to the Federal Government by an additional 30 days to address the 19 demands as outlined in the AGM communiqué.
Suleiman frowned on the increasing casualisation of resident doctors through locum arrangements, stressing that many state governments and some federal institutions rely heavily on locum doctors to fill permanent positions, thereby denying resident doctors job security, benefits and career progression opportunities.
He called for an end to the “exploitative practice” and expressed dissatisfaction over the continued exclusion of resident doctors from the payment of specialist allowances, despite their critical and central role in delivering specialist care in health institutions across the country.
The NARD president urged the Federal Government to, without further delay, pay the outstanding arrears of the 2024 Accoutrement Allowance due to doctors, immediately and unconditionally reinstate the five resident doctors unjustly terminated from FTH Lokoja, with full payment of all outstanding salaries and allowances for the period of their unlawful disengagement.
On conditions that must be met by the government before the association could call of the strike, he said: “If you assure us that you will completely pay house officers, not two or three weeks after every civil servants had received their salaries.”
If you give us the signal that the collective bargaining agreement will be rounded off within a week or two, so that we begin to go into the implementation process; if you sit down and talk about addressing the entry level of doctors into civil service, why downgrade it?”
He appealed to President Bola Tinubu to intervene in the matter and not listen to sycophants who would not want him to listen to the association.
“We are doctors who just want to go back to our hospitals, wards and clinics to see our patients. But while we are doing that, it’s not asking for too much to just collect our salaries and allowances. We are not asking for new things. These are things we have agreed. No one will come and tell you that what they are asking for is illegitimate,” he added.
