THE current disclosure by the Abia State governor, Alex Otti, that some medical docs who’re now not within the state’s make use of nonetheless stay on its payroll and proceed to attract month-to-month salaries is a reminder of the system-gaming and ethical turpitude that continues to carry the nation down. The governor made the unhappy disclosure whereas talking on the first Abia State Council on Well being assembly on the theme of “Offering an Accessible, Reasonably priced and High quality Healthcare System for the New Abia,” which held on the Worldwide Convention Centre, Umuahia. Mentioned the governor : “We’re within the strategy of recruiting new expert start attendants to enhance healthcare service supply within the state. Moreover, our ongoing digitisation of the Abia State civil service has uncovered some employees which have left their responsibility submit for greener pastures, but nonetheless obtain remuneration from the federal government. Whereas the criminality concerned in that is going to be addressed by the related companies of presidency, the essential factor right here is that we would not have the variety of fingers that have been hitherto reported. We’re working laborious to fill these gaps.”
The disclosure brings to thoughts two of the issues confronting the nation. One is the continued emigration of extremely expert docs, nurses, and related medical personnel to varied western locations, notably, the UK, Canada, and the US. In line with the Worldwide Faculty of Surgeons, Nigerian Part ICS-NS, the nation has misplaced no fewer than 6,221 docs to the UK alone within the final six years. The opposite downside is that of ghost staff, one thing that governments at totally different ranges have struggled to stamp out. In 2019, an investigative Committee arrange by the Federal Ministry of Finance revealed that the Federal Authorities was paying over 23,000 ghost staff greater than N5 billion month-to-month. Greater than N100 billion is believed to be misplaced yearly to ghost employee fraud within the nation. The information popping out of Abia speaks to a worrying fusion of the 2 issues.
It’s troublesome to think about one thing like this being pulled off with out the cooperation of actors at varied ranges of management within the state. Accordingly, the very first thing the state authorities has to do is conduct an investigation to find out the individuals concerned on this theft of taxpayer cash and mete out punishment to them as warranted. Not solely that, the state authorities ought to go the additional mile and attain out to the present employers of the docs implicated on this rip-off. It is necessary that such employers be made conscious of the ethical dubiety of people they’ve presumably gone out of their solution to recruit.
That stated, the deeper and extra troubling story right here goes past the docs as people; quite the opposite, it’s in regards to the sick will and vindictiveness that the majority Nigerians exhibit in the case of the state particularly, and the widespread good extra broadly. In any other case, why would a physician already being handsomely compensated exterior the nation system a method to remain on the payroll in Nigeria? Clearly, that particular person has to know that what they’re doing is improper. And why is it that, regardless of the epidemic of religiosity within the nation, many Nigerians nonetheless discover it troublesome to do the precise factor?
Governor Otti has promised to get to the foundation of the matter and fish out these answerable for this indefensible state of affairs. We assist him wholeheartedly. Nonetheless, we fear that what’s at stake right here goes past a single investigation in a single nook of the nation. Like Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has stated, one thing seems to be damaged within the Nigerian society, and the salary-collecting ‘japa’ docs of Abia State are one more demonstration.
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