It’s 3 a.m. in a tertiary hospital somewhere in Nigeria. A mother arrives with a bleeding baby. A surgeon who hasn’t slept properly in 48 hours scrubs in, checks the gurney, and tells the nurse to call the consultant.
The consultant, one of the resident doctors who keeps the hospital breathing, receives the message, frowns at unread emails asking about unpaid allowances, and thinks about the meeting scheduled later that day: a National Executive Council where his association will decide whether to escalate a warning into a nationwide strike.
That decision, a closed-room vote in an association hall, will ripple across wards, wards will ripple into towns, and towns will ripple into the national economy.
This isn’t drama; it’s moral arithmetic: can doctors keep saving lives when their own livelihoods and training funds vanish? The answer, whichever way it swings, will tell us something about how Nigeria values the people who save us when everything else fails.
The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) is holding a National Executive Council meeting today, September 10, to determine whether to press ahead with a nationwide strike after its 10-day ultimatum expired.
The Backstory: Why We’re Here
Resident doctors issued a 10-day ultimatum earlier in September demanding urgent payments and reforms. Their core asks include the immediate disbursement of the 2025 Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF), payment of outstanding CONMESS salary arrears and other unpaid allowances, issuance of membership/residency certificates, prompt promotions, and improved working conditions. If government action isn’t convincing, NARD warned it will strike nationwide.
A partial preview of what the country has already felt: resident doctors in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) began a seven-day warning strike earlier this week to press their demands — an action that left some hospitals shorthanded and heightened public worry.
The Risk Ahead
1. Patient care is the first casualty. Resident doctors staff critical services: emergency rooms, intensive care units, obstetrics theatres. A coordinated withdrawal does not politely postpone elective clinics, it forces life-and-death triage decisions.
2. It’s not about greed — it’s about survival and training. The MRTF and CONMESS arrears fund residents’ training, exams, and sometimes even the running costs of residency programs. Without them, the next generation of specialists risks being undertrained or leaving the country.
3. Government credibility is on trial. The government has been negotiating and issuing assurances, but repeated extensions, promises, and delayed payments have worn thin.
The meeting today is where patience becomes bargaining power. If the FG stumbles again, the political cost will be heavy.
The Politics Beneath The White Coat
This is where technical health policy meets identity politics. Resident doctors are not just wage seekers; they are frontline health architects.
When their training fund disappears, so does the country’s plan for specialists in trauma, oncology, neonatology and more. If Nigeria wants to keep talent, it must invest in training infrastructure, not only salaries. Failure here is structural: deny doctors their professional progression and you degrade the service for everyone.
The Strike
Some commentators will call a strike selfish. But flip the lens: is it more selfish to expect doctors to risk their safety, pay for their training out of pocket, and remain silent while the system collapses? Expect debate — and fiery social media threads — over ethics: does the physician’s oath require self-sacrifice beyond reason, or does it require the state to do its part?
Also Read: NUPENG Suspends Strike After DSS Mediation, But Dangote Dispute Persists
Today’s vote isn’t just a narrow industrial action decision. It will be a referendum on whether Nigeria treats its healers as partners or expendables.
If NARD walks and the government fails to accept accountability, expect not just immediate pain but longer-term brain drain: more doctors leaving, fewer specialists staying, and a health system weakened for a generation.
If you care about your mother, your child, or your elderly neighbour, the outcome matters. Because when the white coats withdraw, the whole country feels feverish.
