September 09, (THEWILL) – A report claiming that many Nigerian nurses are stranded abroad because of verification challenges at home is as embarrassing as it is worrisome, if not laughable. According to the story, many Nigerian nurses living and working in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Saudi Arabia are unable to conclude the final stage of their qualification, which requires verification, because the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria deactivated its verification portal in February 2024, eight months ago. The issue is to get a pin from the verification portal as a registered nurse in Nigeria. That is all.
In the eight months that the portal has been deactivated, many of the nurses have been unable to renew their licences and “meet the regulatory standards set by international organisations.” The end result? “Already, some nurses without the necessary verification from the NMCN find themselves in violation of visa conditions and employment laws, resulting in legal consequences,” and most likely deportation.
During the period that the nurses’ hopes have been hanging by a thread, the President of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, Michael Nnachi, battled with negligible success to engage government officials to ensure the reopening of the portal but in vain.
This is a sad commentary on institutional disregard for qualified professionals who through no fault of theirs are made to go through unnecessary bureaucratic bottlenecks.
We recall that the NMCN has an unsettled case with the Federal Government over demands to create a separate salary structure for nurses and appoint nurses into federal boards as a means to reduce or checkmate migration. The organisation disclosed recently that 75,000 nurses and midwives have emigrated in the past five years.
In a country with an estimated 200 million persons and less than 250,000 registered nurses and 150,000 midwives, the exodus of 75,000 health personnel can be described as alarming, considering that the rate of emigration increases in proportion to the country’s decaying health system.
As a pointer to this drain of manpower in the health sector, the Federal Government recently recruited 2,497 health workers to replace doctors and nurses that have left Nigeria. Earlier, retired nurses and doctors were also recruited by the government to serve as contract staff.
Ex-President of the Nigeria Medical Association, Dr Uche Ojinmah, recently argued that notwithstanding the high number of medical practitioners leaving the country, there were still many doctors unemployed in the country.
He disclosed that despite the fact that doctors are leaving, some are still not employed while the one-for-one policy whereby doctors will start replacing those that leave immediately has been on the drawing board for months without implementation.
There is therefore no doubt that the health sector is almost in receivership and requires drastic measures to restore some sanity as policy initiatives and restoration are being undertaken to address both manpower and infrastructural challenges.
Even so, denying any form of empowerment to professionals in the sector should not be encouraged as part of efforts to restore order. We are not saying that the NMCM shot down the verification portal deliberately to frustrate nurses abroad. The point is that while measures are being undertaken at home to address the rot in the health sector, the interest of professionals should be factored into the mix as managers whether at home or abroad. Rehabilitation of the decayed system that forced them to emigrate can also lure them back to the country.
We implore the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Ali Pate, to intervene and get the NMCM to activate the system. Come to think of it, health workers all over the world emigrate to ply their services globally, Nigerians cannot be an exception.
The focus should be on making the health sector functional and attractive to doctors, nurses, midwives and other health care givers.
