By Kolawole Ojebisi
From all indications, the wave of emigration of young Nigerians to foreign shores, particularly professionals in various walks of life, including the medical field has started taking its tolls on the country.
It appears, too, that the health sector is the worst hit by this development known in local parlance as “Japa”
This is as Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of University Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) have raised the alarm that tertiary health hospitals are facing threats of becoming empty as doctors, nurses and other skilled health workers leave Nigeria in droves due to poor remuneration.
They lamented that despite the federal government investment in health infrastructure, the trend has continued unabated and is drastically affecting healthcare delivery in the country.
The Chief Medical Director (CMD), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Professor Wasiu Adeyemo and the Chief Medical Director (CMD), University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Jesse Abiodun and others raised the alarm at the 2025 budget defence session at the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions on Tuesday.
LUTH CMD, Professor Adeyemo, informed the committee that the rate at which medical workers are leaving the country is alarming, hence the need to act fast to arrest the situation.
He said, “People resign, not even retirement, resignation almost every day. Yes. In the next one or two years, we are going to have all our hospitals empty. We need to do something about remuneration of all the health care workers.
“Otherwise, government is putting a lot of money in infrastructure, and we are going to have empty hospitals. The major reason why people leave is for economic reasons. Consultants are earning less than $1,000”.
Giving details of the Hospital’s 2024 budget performance, the CMD informed that, they had a total budget of N19.2 billion out of which personnel has N13.57 billion and a total overhead of N33.2 million.
He added, “In terms of performance and utilization total overhead was 100 percent as of December. For the total personnel, 91 percent performance but for the capital project 45 percent. So outstanding is 55 percent. November and December are released today we would cover maybe about 85 percent”.
Adeyemo while responding to an observation by members of the committee on personnel performance said that the hospital had 95 percent personnel performance because of payment of benefits and other activities due to resignation and retirements in the year.
The CMD added, “For the proposal for 2025, a total budget of 32.7 billion, out of which a total overhead which is better than that of last year. Personnel is 20.3. I think it’s 13 last year”.
Similarly, the Chief Medical Director (CMD), University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Prof. Abiodun, lamented the delay in the release of budgeted funds to the hospital which he said had adversely affected its operations.
Giving the details of UCH’s 2024 budget, he said it has a capital appropriation of N5,593,110,394. He however informed that only 38 percent of the funds was released leaving a balance of 72 percent left.
He said, “We have the 72% left. Yes, we actually were among the last people to be batched for payment, and the payment started coming in actually in this December. We were able to even utilize this 38 percent because we had already done the cash plan before the release.
“For 2025, we are proposing N4,387,763,661 for capital. This is a bit less than what we had in 2024. And that’s because of this envelope system, what we’re given, we have to work with it.
“The overhead, we have N690,006,464 only. There’s a bit of increase over that of 2024 because of the outrageous bills we are getting from Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company”.
In his remark earlier, the Chairman, House Committee on Health Institutions, Hon. Patrick Umoh, charged the CMDs of University Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) to be thorough in their presentations in order to provide a clear picture of their situations.
He said, “The reality is that you must extract the proposal made by Mr. President as it affects your medical centre. It should be part of your budget, your presentation. The report of the 2024 budget performance and 2025 budget proposal is given provisional approval for now”.
The chairman ruled that while committee could not attend to all the health institutions on the same day, it would collect all their correspondences and submissions from the outstanding teaching hospitals to work on for further deliberations.
