Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Director-general of the World Trade Centre, recently addressed Southeast governors at the ongoing Southeast summit on economy and security in Owerri, Imo State.

During her speech, she emphasized the need for unity among the governors to boost the region’s economy.

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala praised the governors for taking steps to change the narrative but also highlighted the lack of unity among them. She acknowledged the high human resources of the Igbo people, both within the region and across the world.

The former Nigerian finance minister urged the Southeast governors to organize an investment forum to address the issues hindering progress in the region. She encouraged them to work together and avoid unnecessary conflicts.
pharmaceutical companies and vaccine producers to establish a market chain in the region, taking advantage of the privatization of power.

Furthermore, she appealed to the governors to utilize the abundant human resources of the Ndigbo community to support the development of high-quality schools by providing resources and assistance to professors. She also proposed leveraging the expertise of diaspora doctors to establish quality hospitals in the region.

The President, World Medical Association, Osahon Enabulele, on Thursday, said that for Nigeria to meet the World Health Organisation’s standard of ratio of doctors to patients, the country needed to have not less than 250,000 medical doctors in its employ.

Osahon, who spoke as a guest speaker at the public lecture organised by the Federated Chapel of the Edo Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), in Benin City, however, lamented that Nigeria had less than 100,000 doctors, a figure he said was grossly inadequate to meet the doctors-patients ratio.

“The present situation by international standards, a doctor should be assigned to less than 600 patients but in Nigeria’s case, a doctor attends to over 3,000. So Nigeria needs over 250,000 doctors to cope with the current reality”

“There is less than 100,000 registered doctor in Nigeria, let’s say it is 98,000 doctors according to the last update’.

“Out of these 98,000, only 50,000 are actually practicing in Nigeria,” Enabilele bemoaned.

The WMA president stressed that for Nigeria to have good healthcare system, there must be political commitment by the Nigerian leaders to meet the Abuja Declaration of dedicating 15 percent of its budget to healthcare provision.

He decried how political leaders in the country traveled abroad to queue up before seeing less qualified doctors to check blood pressure they could conveniently do Nigeria.

Enabulele, however, identified lack of funds, inadequate infrastructure, unemployment, workplace conditions, remuneration, brain drain, economy, inflation and ineffective healthcare among others as problems facing Nigeria’s health system.

“Because of these problems senior doctors, consultants are moving out of Nigeria in drove because of greater remuneration,” he said.

This, he said resulted in low quality of healthcare delivery in the country.

He called for improved political commitment, empowered healthcare work, improved working conditions, recognition of value and professional work of the medical practitioners, stop medical tourism for political leaders, make wages to be competitive to change the narrative in the health sector.

He said Nigeria government must create a better living condition for the people including the medical profession, saying a lots of people want to come back home when the country is better.

“There is need to establish Health Service Commission that would better administer the health system and drive medical man power, training, best human resource, develop plan among others,” he submitted.

 Calls For Continued Negotiations At State Level

The National Economic Council (NEC), presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima, has appealed to organized labour to stay the action on the plan to initiate an indefinite, nationwide strike from Tuesday, October 3, 2023.

Governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, who disclosed NEC’s resolution on the Labour action to correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Thursday, September 28, also said the council asked Labour leaders to resume negotiations at the states’ level.

It would be recalled that the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) had directed their affiliate bodies to commence the nationwide industrial action from October 3, saying it would be a total shutdown of the system until the government takes steps to attend to their demands.

“It’s going to be a total shutdown…until the government meets the demand of Nigerian workers, and in fact Nigerian masses. The federal government has refused to meaningfully engage and reach agreements with organised Labour on critical issues of the consequences of the unfortunate hike in the price of petrol, which has unleashed massive suffering on Nigeria workers and masses”, the Labour bodies had warned in a joint statement on September 26.

However, relating to the NEC’s appeal to the media after the monthly meeting, Mutfwang said the council was of the opinion that continuing on the path of dialogue would be the best option for the economy, especially at the state level.

The governor said: “Council noted the notice by the national leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress to proceed on an indefinite strike from October 3, 2023. The Council noted further the implication of this strike for the economy and the nation and thus urged members to continue to engage with the leadership of their respective states and to appeal to them to shelve the action and continue on the path of dialogue with the federal government. This is the appeal of Council.”

Explaining the grounds for NEC’s appeal further, Mutfwang described the situation of most of the states when the various governors took off on May 29, noting that many of them were just coming out of prolonged industrial strikes, adding that enforcing a new strike at this time would further damage the economy.

He, however, appealed for more time for the government to work on addressing the concerns of Labour, even as he noted that there are feelers indicating that leadership at every level genuinely wants the issues raised by labour addressed once and for all.

He said: “NEC actually expressed genuine concern on the situation in the country and appreciates the concern by Labour to have those issues addressed. That is why NEC is appealing for patience, appealing for time to be able to address the concerns of Labour. We also believe that Mr. President will be addressing the nation first of October and some of the concerns of Labour will be appropriately addressed in the President’s speech.

“It is therefore important that… it’s a federation, so whatever happens, Labour is represented in all 36 states and the FCT and NEC are appealing that discussions should continue at the state levels because there will be peculiarities as to the issues to be addressed concerning the demands of Labour, therefore dialogue is the way to go.

“The nation is at a very critical moment at this time, in some of the states, when they took over on May 29, the workers were on strike, some of those issues have just been resolved for the workers to return to work. To ask them to go back immediately, it’s going to further damage the economy.

“Therefore NEC, while expressing genuine concern about the situation in the country, appeals for calm and patience and I want to believe that the leadership across the nation at this point in time wants to truly address the issues that concern Labour and the general populace and move the country forward.”

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has cleared 190,749 passports application backlogs following the directive of the Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo four weeks ago.

According to information from the Minister’s office in Abuja, the NIS now has about 13,583 pending applications before it.

The backlogs cleared were as of September 27th.

The update does not however include applications filed by Nigerians within the past four weeks as the Immigration offices nationwide continued to attend to request of renewals of expired passports and those applying for fresh booklets everyday.

Our correspondent however gathered that the Minister has promised to keep a close watch on the operations of the NIS to prevent a recurrence of backlogs of applications due to deliberate human activities.

Dr Tunji-Ojo also said he would ensure eliminations of human interactions in the processes to stamp out corruption while technology would be deployed to hasten the processes of procurement of the booklets.