The Joint Health Sector Union and Assembly of Healthcare Professional Associations have called on the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, not to assign the portfolio of Minister or Health to a physician.
The health union, in a statement signed by its acting National Secretary, Matthew Ajorutu, said the nation’s health sector had been progressively destroyed in the last three dispensations of leadership with regards to ministerial appointments.
The union said, “Today the health system in Nigeria, which is rated 187th out of 191 by the World Health Organisation, through the machinations of the leadership of physicians, stands no chance of redemption except the President-elect comes up with a unique model of reforms which places a premium on change agents who are not necessarily health workers, to redress the ills in the health sector as presently nurtured by physicians at the ministerial parastatals and other agencies of the Federal Ministry of Health.
“At the height of ministerial nomination and screenings in the country, Nigerian physicians have always taken parochial positions that one of its own must be appointed at the helm of the federal Ministry of Health because according to it, this was a global practice.
“Section 147 (1) and (2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 is very clear as to how ministers are appointed.
“Section 42 (1) (a) and (b) also compels a right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion, political opinion, as it prohibits all of these in all its entirety. A minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a political appointee whose duty is purely administrative.”
According to Ajorutu, the general perception on why physicians want to continue to be Minister of Health is “to maintain the hegemony of an unjust entry-level in the civil service, discriminatory salary scales and continue to intimidate the Nigerian public with their frequent and selfish strike action.”
