YPP ON LINGERING DOCTORS' STRIKE ACTION: IT'S TIME TO REJECT INSENSITIVE POLITICIANS IN 2023.

1. It is indeed sad and discomforting that the APC government after several weeks of the ongoing strike action by medical doctors is still very far from coming up with a solution to a problem that is not rocket science.

2. While we understand that the ruling elites have got alternatives as seen in the recent show of medical solidarity between President Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu in London, it is nothing short of callousness to have allowed the strike to linger on for this long at the detriment of the Nigerian masses who have no alternative.

3. The cumulative time and resources spent abroad by President Muhammadu Buhari on medical tourism since the assumption of office would have been enough to set up a world-class medical centre in the country and effectively put an end to the reasons for the intermittent strikes.

4. How our political elites can sleep at night in this COVID-19 era especially with the new Delta variant that has led to the sudden surge in the cases of infected persons and deaths while our doctors are on strike is enough to elicit special research on leadership insensitivity in this part of the world.

5. As long as our leaders refuse to place a high premium on education and health, which have jointly attracted ridiculously low budgetary allocations in the last six years of this administration, Nigeria will continue to record an extremely poor ranking in the Human Development Index.

6. We hereby call on President Muhammadu Buhari to as a matter of national urgency personally intervene in this lingering strike action by medical doctors in order to reach a compromise that will herald a sustainable solution. Anything short of a personal intervention by the President himself in the next 48 hours should be regarded by Nigerians as deliberate.

7. We also call on the leadership of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) with an appeal to kindly look beyond the insensitivity of the government and allow compassion to prevail because of hundreds dying daily. We admonish a quick compromise that will allow members to return to work as soon as possible.

8. If funding is an excuse, the sale of over 7 idle Presidential jets, merging of redundant MDAs, reduction of frivolous allowances by government officials will help to raise all the required funds needed to address this problem once and for all.

9. Conclusively, Nigerians especially the doctors and all those who have lost loved ones due to inadequate funding of the health sector should consider this a massive lesson, hence avoid visionless, insensitive and deceptive politicians in 2023.

Signed:

Comrade Egbeola Wale Martins
National Publicity Secretary
Young Progressives Party
nps@ypp.ng