Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the House of Representatives, has lamented the increasing number of doctors departing Nigeria in search of greener pastures.
Describing the situation as worrisome, Gbajabiamila noted that no fewer than 800 resident doctors have left Nigeria for foreign countries in the past eight months.
The Speaker said this when he received the executives of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) in his office on Thursday, October 20.
Gbajabiamila blamed the situation on poor remuneration, adding that the revenue generation capacity of most countries has dropped since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That is a very scary figure and that is not very encouraging for a country of over 200 million people to have the core of your medical team, your young ones, resident doctors, leaving in droves like that, definitely something must be wrong,” Gbajabiamila said.
“You have identified that to be the issue of emoluments and salaries, that’s always a very important issue. If you work, you must get paid, and you must get paid a good salary.
“It’s also important that we put those things in context in terms of everybody’s need to get paid, and that’s very important. That’s one of the reasons, if not the most important reason, why you work because we all have families to take care of. But we must put it in the Nigerian context in terms of the revenues available to the country. “
“This is a worldwide phenomenon, right now everything is going down. Countries are not making as much revenue as they should.
