Adeyinka Adeniji 
Despite appeals across the board to shelve their ongoing strike actions, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), University College Hospital, Ibadan branch is set to stage a protest to drive home their demands to the Federal Government.
Recall, resident Doctors across the country have been at loggerheads with the FG through the Federal Ministry of Health, over issues bordering on human capital development, remuneration, and working conditions.
However amid calls to shelve the strike in the interest of Nigerians who the Ministry of Health had repeatedly noted were “dying in droves” due to inability to access healthcare attention because the Doctors’ are on strike, members in UCH, Ibadan will converge in front of the Emergency Department of the medical teaching institution tomorrow 9th August 2023.
According to a correspondence shared with journalists, the UCH, Ibadan arm of the Association says doctors will clad in Lab coats and converge at 9 am at the designated spot Wednesday morning.
Pleading earlier on behalf of the Government in a statement Tuesday afternoon, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Kachollom Daju, had assured that the government was doing all within its power to attend to the remaining issues on demand from the doctors, as some have already been met.
“We are pleading with them to call off the strike. To be honest, the Federal Ministry of Health, their parent ministry, wrote to the Presidency on the issue in the health sector for him to intervene, we are awaiting his response.” said the Perm. Sec. in the statement.
Daju, while explaining that an inter-ministerial committee was at work to find lasting resolutions to the Doctors’ demands, said there is a need for them to be patient with the new government to appoint Ministers.
Regardless of Daju and others’ pleas for the medical practitioners to return to work and allow the committee set up to look into the matter to conclude its assignment within the time frame, the UCH branch of the Association is unyielding, as they are now set to stage a peaceful protest and picketing of ministries and some institutions.
