Nollywood is giving nursing a bad name.
Nollywood Is Giving Nursing A Bad Name—NANNM President
By Fejiro Oliver
TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW OF THE NATIONAL PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THE NIGERIAN NURSES AND MIDWIVES, COMRADE {ALHAJI} ABDRAFIU ALANI ADENIJI {3As} ON 10TH NOVEMBER, 2013 BY MEMBERS OF THE NIGERIAN NURSES RENAISSANCE MOVEMENT {NNRM}.
NNRM: Sir, November 24th marked a year you were saddled with the responsibility of leading Nigerian nurses, how has the journey been so far?
3As: I want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to serve Nigerian nurses, it has been a very encouraging assignment more so that it is not the 1st assignment I will have in NANNM but per chance for now the highest. The journey has been so interesting, so enterprising and so challenging but we thank God for everything. Because we still remain focussed, we remain committed and dedicated to the course of National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives. We have come into office, we have been able to grab the trend of affairs and by the grace of God we hope to use this opportunity to take Nigerian nurses to the next level.
NNRM: Recently, Nurses joined other health workers to embark on industrial action to press home some demands, has this struggle yielded any results?
3As: Well, like it is always been said, struggle continues, the other health workers that we joined to embark on industrial action whereby Nigerian nurses and midwives are key figure is JOHESU which is the coming together of health professionals in their own right which include Nigerian nurses and midwives, laboratory scientists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and administrators in the health sector.
We embarked on the strike because of the maladministration of health care industry, it has been our demand that the health care industry be looked into critically as a multidisciplinary industry whereby team approach as it is obtainable all over the world are made to have its due course but in Nigeria today, the health care industry has been bastardized and the health care industry as I use to say is in bondage. Bondage of one single health professional which is the medical and dental practitioner, because of this other health workers could not fold their arms in a multidisciplinary approach and allow a single health professional to hold us into ransom.
This is why we have to lend our voice and make the Nigerian populace know that the health industry is not like the ministry of justice whereby my lord justice is the only person who is the professional there. It is like the industry of the ministry of works where we have architects, surveyors they come together to play their part and there is no way a civil engineer will say a surveyor is nobody in the works department. However, in the health care industry today, we have a problem where headship has been believed to be the birthright of medical and dental practitioners as against global practice. And that is why we are having the current problem in Nigeria where our health indices is nose diving.
About 1980, the age expectancy was higher than what have today despite the big input and investment into the health care industry and this is so because the health care industry is not allowed to run the way it is been run in other developed countries of the world. Whereas it is the prerogative of the head of state of the country to appoint ministers, it is not stated that in any industry like the health industry, the minister should only be medical and dental practitioners. In other places like in U.S, where we cannot compare Nigeria's health care system with, the ministers/the persons in charge of the health industry are not just limited to one group of professionals.
In the U.K, the department of health is currently being led by the cabinet minister the Rt. Hon Jeremy Hunt a graduate of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The secretary of state for health and human services in the US is Kathleen Sebelius who holds a Master of public administration and a Bachelors of Arts degree. Also the minister of health for China is Norihisa TAMURA a graduate of Law and Economics.
These are people who are not physicians but are heading the health industry and in all intents and purpose are performing excellently well. In India as well the minister of health Ghulam Nabi Azad is not a medical doctor but a graduate of Zoology and these are countries where Nigerians go to access health care.
Even in Africa here, Botswana is a country that has been rated by the world health organisation as having the best national health care services, the minister as we are talking in Botswana is an accountant, this accountant took over from Mrs. Motsumi, a nurse who was health minister from 2003-2009. Earlier on, Mrs. Phumaphi who is also a nurse was the minister of health from 1989- 2002. It is noteworthy that these people performed excellently well and that is why Botswana is now being rated as one of the countries with the best health care indices in Africa.
Physicians of recent times have not being ministers of health Botswana in fact none has been appointed health minister in Botswana since her independence in 1966. I make bold and I can be challenged anywhere that it has been researched and said that in any country of the world, the efficiency of health services is dependent on the placement of nurses. If the nurses are well placed, the health care outcome will be better but if they are not, the reverse is the case because nurses are the pivot upon which other health care profession revolves.
The strike is yielding result that is why the members of the medical profession now went on a phantom strike that is baseless considering their requests; calling for the stoppage of the IPPIS which has been acclaimed to have saved billions of naira from being siphoned into overhead running costs in this country, calling for surgeon general; this country is not a country where you appoint a surgeon general.
Well we are not saying the government of the day cannot appoint any body into position but we should take into consideration the effects of such appointments because if the government of the country should make a mistake of appointing a surgeon general, then they should be able to accommodate a nurse general in the country, pharmacist general, a laboratory scientist general in this country. So it is better we manage our system the way we are managing. By the grace of God, this next week the implementation committee headed by the head of service of the federation is going to come up with a report.
It was in agitation of this enviable strike that has yielded result in rescuing Nigerian health industry from collapse that the resident doctors went on strike. And of course we are all living witnesses that when every other health workers were on strike, everything was in standstill but during their own strike work was going on because it was not a strike that was based on principle, it was based on “they wanted to give these people what they demanded for and we must also have something to say.”
Initially, what they were even saying was that if the government should accede to our requests, they are going on strike for no just reason. They are just cooking up these reasons for going on strike and Nigerians are watching for the outcome of this negotiation. However, what I am trying to say is that the result of that one has started yielding because the industrial action has come to an end with an implementation committee set up.
The implementation committee is going to submit its report and then the issue of skipping is a thing of the past though in a way that can be described as a useless move, the federal ministry of health are going to court on some of the issue. Also, talking about specialists and appointment of consultants, all over the world we know that when you are a consultant you have something to render. I am free to be a consultant in nursing practice, not in medicine, not in pharmacy. Why should another profession say I cannot become a consultant in nursing field in as much as I have the prerequisite qualification?
Every professional has the right to become consultants in their fields of endeavour and that is why we are happy with the National Industrial Court of Nigeria judgement of last month which ruled that a lab scientist has the right to head the laboratory and investigative department of the hospital and not somebody who studied medicine and per chance because he is a pathologist.
We are making way and we are watching the trend and by the grace of God, their challenge of consultancy for other people is going to be an exercise in futility and that is why I said there is positive result. The only thing we have to appeal to health care professionals is that we be patient, by the grace of God before the end of this month these things will be made empirical for us to see.
NNRM: Within the last one year, what have been the achievements of your administration as NANNM president?
3As: Well to me, achievement is a very objective thing because it is comparative. I am aware that nothing can be achieved in an era of chaos and by the grace of God we are guided by our manifesto. In my manifesto and that of the people that we are working together, we have a focus. In this regard, the first thing we did in office was to perform an appraisal of the achievements of the past regime and in this regards, I have cause to thank the founding fathers of this association for forming for us a professional association cum trade union in NANNM.
We are building a bridge across all the membership of National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives and per chance one of the greatest achievement we have is to ensure that there is reconciliation among the ranks and file of Nigerian nurses. Today, our reconciliatory efforts have been able to bring back in whole the members of nurses that are in the federal health institution.
This is a very great achievement to me because without peace you cannot achieve anything and membership is the strength of an organization. We are happy that leadership at all levels have been able to reconcile their differences and we are one and the same and with unity there is progress but without unity there is going to be retrogression. So this is one great achievement we have had. Not only this, across board we have been able to ensure that the gap between the old and the new generation is being bridged so that Nigerian nurses and midwives be one and the same.
By the grace of God, we have already started unionising and bringing into our folds the private nurses and midwives and before the end of the first quarter of next year, the private nurses will be bonafide members again of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives. Part of the achievements is to measure up to the standard at the international level.
Last year, the greatest number of nurses were led to attend the international council of nurses conference in Australia and I thank God that we were able to perform well there and give Nigerian nurses adequate representation. We have also participated in some other organisations at the international and national levels; we were in Liberia for the West African College of Nursing. Our midwives were also in Kenya and they have just come back from even Ghana.
We have been able to reconcile that the last administration put much value on infrastructural development i.e. the leadership of Alhaji Hussein Lawal Dutsinma was able to build on infrastructural development apart from manpower development. We are turning around these structures for now because the situation is that if you have too many structures on ground without maintaining them, you will be losing them. So we are maintaining these ones and in our budget for this year, we still have in our proposal that before the end of next year, we are going to lay a foundation for a befitting national secretariat that will be our own that is a comprehensive one.
We have also led other stakeholders to ensure that the thinking of the federal ministry of health that internship is not the right of nurses who are graduates from our universities is corrected and we are happy that we led the team of stakeholders like lecturers in the universities, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria and the nursing department of the federal ministry of health to ensure that the federal ministry of health endorse the internship and this we have being pursuing vigorously.
So also, we led Nigerian nurses to ensure that there is no incursion into the nursing profession. We were all living witnesses when the announcement of a medical doctor as the chairman of the Nursing & Midwifery Council of Nigeria which NANNM fought to a standstill with other stakeholders. We are happy to say that at least we have been able to ensure that this is changed and no other professional is made to superintend over our profession. We are happy today that another person has being announced as the chairman of N&MCN.
Not only this, there are many ongoing things that we are doing; we are collaborating with the N&MCN and the department that oversees nursing activities in the federal ministry of health to evolve a tripartite body that will see to the affairs of nursing. These are some of the achievements and by the grace of God; the peaceful existence that we have established is going to be a very veritable tool for us to perform. Equally we are collaborating with our professional colleagues in the Diasporas and by the grace of God the collaboration efforts with these groups will soon begin to yield positive results.
NNRM: There is more hullaballoo on the issue of internship for nursing graduates; in fact so many critics have opined that your administration is not committed to pursuing this course especially when you consider that internship was not mentioned in your manifesto and that the communiqué of the recently held NANNM NEC meeting also did not talk about internship. What is your take on this?
3As: Thank you very much, the making of a manifesto is your focus when you are coming into office, definitely you have to team up with other people and you have to see the reality on ground when you get there. The issue of internship became something so turbulent after we have taken over and that is why we have included it. In a manifesto and in leadership, when you are planning your programme, it is a 4 {four} years programme. You leave room for things that are emerging issues, internship is an emerging issue and I want to comment about one of our colleagues who wrote an open letter to me as the president of NANNM.
I want to beg your pardon that this is an attempt to contribute to the achievement of internship but most things in the write up are just hearsays. Because the individual is not informed about the level of things and the stages that the process involves, he believes that we are doing next to nothing about internship and I make bold to say that the issue of internship is an establishment matter and before internship is successful, the national council on establishment will have to sit on it and see these interns as part of the workforce of the health care industry and this is what we have been working on.
I am proud to inform you that the association put up a memo in seeking and defence of internship in Markurdi at the separate council levels 1, 2 and 3 last month and by the grace of God this memo was accepted and adjudged fit to be taken to the joint council and we have just arrived from the joint council in Benin where it was presented to a larger house of the public service joint negotiating council and I am happy to inform you that the memo seeking for the placement of internship and seeking approval for the internship apart from meeting in the federal ministry of health, apart from the letter written by the NUC, apart from pursuance of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria has been put together by the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives under my leadership and this paper has successfully passed the hurdles to go to the national council on establishment.
The only prayer I am seeking from Nigerian nurses is for the success of this paper at the national council on establishment. If it has not passed through all these stages, all the protest, all the paper publications, all the open letters amounts to nothing but noise making but the rudiments of the process involved is understood by the national association especially where it pinches and these are the stages we are going through. I have had cause to address the prospective interns and I want to assure them that we will not leave any stone unturned.
It is not a simple thing because it is an establishment matter and we are setting the pace, we are following the pace to ensure that the issue of internship scales all the hurdles that it entails for it to succeed.
NNRM: Sir, some critics have described your administration's pursuit of the unified scheme of service as a retrogressive agenda. How do you react to this and what does the nursing profession in Nigeria stand to benefit from a unified scheme of service?
3As: Thank you very much, those who see the pursuit of a unified scheme of service as a retrogressive agenda should please go back to their drawing board and think seriously about why nursing is a profession. Why is there no balkanised scheme of service for medical doctors in this country? There is a unified scheme of service for medicine in this country, whether you are a general practitioner or consultant in your regard. There is a unified scheme of service whose characteristics is that your qualification determines where you come in and your exit position and what are the opportunities that are open for you.
It is not only Nigerian nurses that are adopting a unified scheme of service; this is the way it is all over the world. The scheme of service is not just a schedule of duty of a university trained nurse or the schedule of duty of a school of nursing trained nurse, it is the coming together of the outlook of what nursing profession is and that is what a unified scheme of service. For those who are criticising this move, they should come close to the association and learn what we mean by this unified scheme of service.
The effectiveness and the result of education transformation in nursing practice in Nigeria will be pursued to the last and by the inauguration of the board of the nursing council of Nigeria, we are going to have a compact body to ensure that the success of the educational transformation is made realizable in due course. Not only this, we are talking about membership drive, we are going to ensure that there is no disparity among the treatment that is given to federal health nurses, state health nurses, local government health nurses and those in private practice.
3As: We are very close to our members and we know the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians as regard their expectation from the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria. With listening ears and being a grassroots person, we are going to ensure that the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria when eventually inaugurated meets the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerian nurses and that is by leading while others follow in our education planning, in our registration, training, examination, certification and licensing. Take for example, people are complaining about the time it takes you to relicense and by the grace of God, efficiency will come into this regard because already nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria is putting in place some measures that will make our relicensing as efficient as possible. By the grace of God, we are not going to relent in ensuring that nurses and midwives in Nigeria will be proud of the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria.
3As: Well, the West African College of Nursing is a professional body and by the grace of God when you look into my manifesto, we were hoping at a national post graduate college for nurses and we can only achieve that through the West African College of Nursing. I am happy that on the planning table, the programme of the West African College of Nursing is already changing and there is a planned programme of four years that will be like that of any other professionals; the medical post graduate college and the pharmaceutical post graduate college of Nigeria.
3As: We will benefit much in the current trend in social media and we want to assure you that before the end of this year, our website that has been moribund will come to live because already the job has been given to the person who is designing and will be hosting it very soon.
3As: That's what I am trying to say, the image is not good but there are lots of misplaced image or misrepresentation, misplaced identity in the public, many at times people take the image of a quack or anything that happens, you know the bad thing in this country is that there is a lot of ignorance. When you enter the hospital, a medical records officer misbehave, when an attendant misbehaves, when even a pharmacist and even a doctor misbehave, what the Nigerian public will say is that nurses are misbehaving.
3As: Nigerian nurses are encouraged to look beyond the demoralising factors militating against us in the health care services in Nigeria and put in their best. Try to reincarnate the Nightingale era of a dedicated, committed and disciplined nurse that people will meet and then their problems are gone. I want to encourage Nigerian nurses that better days are still ahead. In the past, nursing practice was not like this but better days are coming ahead and as a result we should keep trust with the oncoming dispensation.
NNRM: Sir, November 24th marked a year you were saddled with the responsibility of leading Nigerian nurses, how has the journey been so far?
3As: I want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to serve Nigerian nurses, it has been a very encouraging assignment more so that it is not the 1st assignment I will have in NANNM but per chance for now the highest. The journey has been so interesting, so enterprising and so challenging but we thank God for everything. Because we still remain focussed, we remain committed and dedicated to the course of National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives. We have come into office, we have been able to grab the trend of affairs and by the grace of God we hope to use this opportunity to take Nigerian nurses to the next level.
NNRM: Recently, Nurses joined other health workers to embark on industrial action to press home some demands, has this struggle yielded any results?
3As: Well, like it is always been said, struggle continues, the other health workers that we joined to embark on industrial action whereby Nigerian nurses and midwives are key figure is JOHESU which is the coming together of health professionals in their own right which include Nigerian nurses and midwives, laboratory scientists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and administrators in the health sector.
We embarked on the strike because of the maladministration of health care industry, it has been our demand that the health care industry be looked into critically as a multidisciplinary industry whereby team approach as it is obtainable all over the world are made to have its due course but in Nigeria today, the health care industry has been bastardized and the health care industry as I use to say is in bondage. Bondage of one single health professional which is the medical and dental practitioner, because of this other health workers could not fold their arms in a multidisciplinary approach and allow a single health professional to hold us into ransom.
This is why we have to lend our voice and make the Nigerian populace know that the health industry is not like the ministry of justice whereby my lord justice is the only person who is the professional there. It is like the industry of the ministry of works where we have architects, surveyors they come together to play their part and there is no way a civil engineer will say a surveyor is nobody in the works department. However, in the health care industry today, we have a problem where headship has been believed to be the birthright of medical and dental practitioners as against global practice. And that is why we are having the current problem in Nigeria where our health indices is nose diving.
About 1980, the age expectancy was higher than what have today despite the big input and investment into the health care industry and this is so because the health care industry is not allowed to run the way it is been run in other developed countries of the world. Whereas it is the prerogative of the head of state of the country to appoint ministers, it is not stated that in any industry like the health industry, the minister should only be medical and dental practitioners. In other places like in U.S, where we cannot compare Nigeria's health care system with, the ministers/the persons in charge of the health industry are not just limited to one group of professionals.
In the U.K, the department of health is currently being led by the cabinet minister the Rt. Hon Jeremy Hunt a graduate of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The secretary of state for health and human services in the US is Kathleen Sebelius who holds a Master of public administration and a Bachelors of Arts degree. Also the minister of health for China is Norihisa TAMURA a graduate of Law and Economics.
These are people who are not physicians but are heading the health industry and in all intents and purpose are performing excellently well. In India as well the minister of health Ghulam Nabi Azad is not a medical doctor but a graduate of Zoology and these are countries where Nigerians go to access health care.
Even in Africa here, Botswana is a country that has been rated by the world health organisation as having the best national health care services, the minister as we are talking in Botswana is an accountant, this accountant took over from Mrs. Motsumi, a nurse who was health minister from 2003-2009. Earlier on, Mrs. Phumaphi who is also a nurse was the minister of health from 1989- 2002. It is noteworthy that these people performed excellently well and that is why Botswana is now being rated as one of the countries with the best health care indices in Africa.
Physicians of recent times have not being ministers of health Botswana in fact none has been appointed health minister in Botswana since her independence in 1966. I make bold and I can be challenged anywhere that it has been researched and said that in any country of the world, the efficiency of health services is dependent on the placement of nurses. If the nurses are well placed, the health care outcome will be better but if they are not, the reverse is the case because nurses are the pivot upon which other health care profession revolves.
The strike is yielding result that is why the members of the medical profession now went on a phantom strike that is baseless considering their requests; calling for the stoppage of the IPPIS which has been acclaimed to have saved billions of naira from being siphoned into overhead running costs in this country, calling for surgeon general; this country is not a country where you appoint a surgeon general.
Well we are not saying the government of the day cannot appoint any body into position but we should take into consideration the effects of such appointments because if the government of the country should make a mistake of appointing a surgeon general, then they should be able to accommodate a nurse general in the country, pharmacist general, a laboratory scientist general in this country. So it is better we manage our system the way we are managing. By the grace of God, this next week the implementation committee headed by the head of service of the federation is going to come up with a report.
It was in agitation of this enviable strike that has yielded result in rescuing Nigerian health industry from collapse that the resident doctors went on strike. And of course we are all living witnesses that when every other health workers were on strike, everything was in standstill but during their own strike work was going on because it was not a strike that was based on principle, it was based on “they wanted to give these people what they demanded for and we must also have something to say.”
Initially, what they were even saying was that if the government should accede to our requests, they are going on strike for no just reason. They are just cooking up these reasons for going on strike and Nigerians are watching for the outcome of this negotiation. However, what I am trying to say is that the result of that one has started yielding because the industrial action has come to an end with an implementation committee set up.
The implementation committee is going to submit its report and then the issue of skipping is a thing of the past though in a way that can be described as a useless move, the federal ministry of health are going to court on some of the issue. Also, talking about specialists and appointment of consultants, all over the world we know that when you are a consultant you have something to render. I am free to be a consultant in nursing practice, not in medicine, not in pharmacy. Why should another profession say I cannot become a consultant in nursing field in as much as I have the prerequisite qualification?
Every professional has the right to become consultants in their fields of endeavour and that is why we are happy with the National Industrial Court of Nigeria judgement of last month which ruled that a lab scientist has the right to head the laboratory and investigative department of the hospital and not somebody who studied medicine and per chance because he is a pathologist.
We are making way and we are watching the trend and by the grace of God, their challenge of consultancy for other people is going to be an exercise in futility and that is why I said there is positive result. The only thing we have to appeal to health care professionals is that we be patient, by the grace of God before the end of this month these things will be made empirical for us to see.
NNRM: Within the last one year, what have been the achievements of your administration as NANNM president?
3As: Well to me, achievement is a very objective thing because it is comparative. I am aware that nothing can be achieved in an era of chaos and by the grace of God we are guided by our manifesto. In my manifesto and that of the people that we are working together, we have a focus. In this regard, the first thing we did in office was to perform an appraisal of the achievements of the past regime and in this regards, I have cause to thank the founding fathers of this association for forming for us a professional association cum trade union in NANNM.
We are building a bridge across all the membership of National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives and per chance one of the greatest achievement we have is to ensure that there is reconciliation among the ranks and file of Nigerian nurses. Today, our reconciliatory efforts have been able to bring back in whole the members of nurses that are in the federal health institution.
This is a very great achievement to me because without peace you cannot achieve anything and membership is the strength of an organization. We are happy that leadership at all levels have been able to reconcile their differences and we are one and the same and with unity there is progress but without unity there is going to be retrogression. So this is one great achievement we have had. Not only this, across board we have been able to ensure that the gap between the old and the new generation is being bridged so that Nigerian nurses and midwives be one and the same.
By the grace of God, we have already started unionising and bringing into our folds the private nurses and midwives and before the end of the first quarter of next year, the private nurses will be bonafide members again of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives. Part of the achievements is to measure up to the standard at the international level.
Last year, the greatest number of nurses were led to attend the international council of nurses conference in Australia and I thank God that we were able to perform well there and give Nigerian nurses adequate representation. We have also participated in some other organisations at the international and national levels; we were in Liberia for the West African College of Nursing. Our midwives were also in Kenya and they have just come back from even Ghana.
We have been able to reconcile that the last administration put much value on infrastructural development i.e. the leadership of Alhaji Hussein Lawal Dutsinma was able to build on infrastructural development apart from manpower development. We are turning around these structures for now because the situation is that if you have too many structures on ground without maintaining them, you will be losing them. So we are maintaining these ones and in our budget for this year, we still have in our proposal that before the end of next year, we are going to lay a foundation for a befitting national secretariat that will be our own that is a comprehensive one.
We have also led other stakeholders to ensure that the thinking of the federal ministry of health that internship is not the right of nurses who are graduates from our universities is corrected and we are happy that we led the team of stakeholders like lecturers in the universities, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria and the nursing department of the federal ministry of health to ensure that the federal ministry of health endorse the internship and this we have being pursuing vigorously.
So also, we led Nigerian nurses to ensure that there is no incursion into the nursing profession. We were all living witnesses when the announcement of a medical doctor as the chairman of the Nursing & Midwifery Council of Nigeria which NANNM fought to a standstill with other stakeholders. We are happy to say that at least we have been able to ensure that this is changed and no other professional is made to superintend over our profession. We are happy today that another person has being announced as the chairman of N&MCN.
Not only this, there are many ongoing things that we are doing; we are collaborating with the N&MCN and the department that oversees nursing activities in the federal ministry of health to evolve a tripartite body that will see to the affairs of nursing. These are some of the achievements and by the grace of God; the peaceful existence that we have established is going to be a very veritable tool for us to perform. Equally we are collaborating with our professional colleagues in the Diasporas and by the grace of God the collaboration efforts with these groups will soon begin to yield positive results.
NNRM: There is more hullaballoo on the issue of internship for nursing graduates; in fact so many critics have opined that your administration is not committed to pursuing this course especially when you consider that internship was not mentioned in your manifesto and that the communiqué of the recently held NANNM NEC meeting also did not talk about internship. What is your take on this?
3As: Thank you very much, the making of a manifesto is your focus when you are coming into office, definitely you have to team up with other people and you have to see the reality on ground when you get there. The issue of internship became something so turbulent after we have taken over and that is why we have included it. In a manifesto and in leadership, when you are planning your programme, it is a 4 {four} years programme. You leave room for things that are emerging issues, internship is an emerging issue and I want to comment about one of our colleagues who wrote an open letter to me as the president of NANNM.
I want to beg your pardon that this is an attempt to contribute to the achievement of internship but most things in the write up are just hearsays. Because the individual is not informed about the level of things and the stages that the process involves, he believes that we are doing next to nothing about internship and I make bold to say that the issue of internship is an establishment matter and before internship is successful, the national council on establishment will have to sit on it and see these interns as part of the workforce of the health care industry and this is what we have been working on.
I am proud to inform you that the association put up a memo in seeking and defence of internship in Markurdi at the separate council levels 1, 2 and 3 last month and by the grace of God this memo was accepted and adjudged fit to be taken to the joint council and we have just arrived from the joint council in Benin where it was presented to a larger house of the public service joint negotiating council and I am happy to inform you that the memo seeking for the placement of internship and seeking approval for the internship apart from meeting in the federal ministry of health, apart from the letter written by the NUC, apart from pursuance of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria has been put together by the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives under my leadership and this paper has successfully passed the hurdles to go to the national council on establishment.
The only prayer I am seeking from Nigerian nurses is for the success of this paper at the national council on establishment. If it has not passed through all these stages, all the protest, all the paper publications, all the open letters amounts to nothing but noise making but the rudiments of the process involved is understood by the national association especially where it pinches and these are the stages we are going through. I have had cause to address the prospective interns and I want to assure them that we will not leave any stone unturned.
It is not a simple thing because it is an establishment matter and we are setting the pace, we are following the pace to ensure that the issue of internship scales all the hurdles that it entails for it to succeed.
NNRM: Sir, some critics have described your administration's pursuit of the unified scheme of service as a retrogressive agenda. How do you react to this and what does the nursing profession in Nigeria stand to benefit from a unified scheme of service?
3As: Thank you very much, those who see the pursuit of a unified scheme of service as a retrogressive agenda should please go back to their drawing board and think seriously about why nursing is a profession. Why is there no balkanised scheme of service for medical doctors in this country? There is a unified scheme of service for medicine in this country, whether you are a general practitioner or consultant in your regard. There is a unified scheme of service whose characteristics is that your qualification determines where you come in and your exit position and what are the opportunities that are open for you.
It is not only Nigerian nurses that are adopting a unified scheme of service; this is the way it is all over the world. The scheme of service is not just a schedule of duty of a university trained nurse or the schedule of duty of a school of nursing trained nurse, it is the coming together of the outlook of what nursing profession is and that is what a unified scheme of service. For those who are criticising this move, they should come close to the association and learn what we mean by this unified scheme of service.
The unified scheme of service has the characteristics of accommodating everybody across board and this is not the first attempt at unifying nursing profession in Nigeria. The IAP award of 1981 had already unified nurses in Nigeria, regardless of your institution of study; it has provided the basis for professionalism in this country.
I make bold to say that university graduates have started graduating since 1960s from University of Ibadan and we have not been able to achieve professionalism in nursing until IAP award of 1981 because all these products come into the labour market and they don't have a place to fit in. It was only at the introduction of a unified body known as the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives which is a prerequisite qualification for a profession in a country that professionalism came into place.
Let me inform the person saying we are pursuing a retrogressive course that since 1972, nursing profession has been categorized all together by the act that has to do with professional practice in Nigeria. This was reviewed in 2000, now the NICN judgment has come to finalize everything about professionalism in Nigeria and what are we saying about this unified scheme of service that we have been proposing and pursuing for some time now.
But become some people do not understand it and because of selfish approach, if I say I am a graduate nurse today I don't think about diplomate nurses who are the people rendering the core clinical services, a consultant on the ward knows that the general practitioners are important and that is why when they are negotiating, they negotiate across and that is why a doctor who is a general practitioner in Nigeria today has an entry point of GL 12 and a consultant has an entry point of GL 15.
So also in this proposed scheme of service, a diplomate nurse that has just finished from the school of nursing has his/her own entry point of 7 and after a year according to the IAP award goes to 8. And if such person is doubly qualified, he/she comes into service on GL 8, a graduate nurse is expected to come in even interns on GL 9 by our proposal.
Where lies injustice in the unified scheme of service? And by this proposal, what we are saying is that like a pharmacist who is a general practitioner is capable of rising up to the highest level but they pave way for somebody who has Pharm D and a consultant in medicine will have an advantageous position over a general practitioner, so also when a degree holder is coming to become a director, somebody who is not a graduate nurse will rise to the same position but the person who is a degree holder in this area will become a director.
This is the future of the unified scheme of service and it is the world view, the emerging trend, the modern trend in professional practice all over the world. I will rather advise the people who are criticizing this to study more about professional growth and development and remuneration all over the world. Why we are having health care professionals being rated low is because we are neglecting fact that a registered nurse who has passed through the examination is likened to passing a professional examination is like COREN, like passing through the law school, like being a chartered accountant or ANAN in accountancy holds a professional certificate and these people are recognised as professionals.
If you do not recognise them as professionals, the salaries income and wages commission, the body who determines what you are paid will always rate nurses very low. I want to appeal to the people criticizing this unified scheme of service to come to the world view of the profession all over the world today and see that a unified approach to professionalism is what we need. After all there are people who might have passed through the university, going for service but have not passed the nursing and midwifery exam.
Such people cannot practice as a professional in this country despite being degree holders in nursing sciences because it is only that person who is registered by the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria and I am happy that the nursing and midwifery council.
The erstwhile registrar of the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria was in the national industrial court and stood as a witness to show that nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria has no register for an assistant nurse cadre. It is only professional nurses that are being trained and being licensed to practice in this country. So the pursuance of a unified scheme of service is in consonance with the thinking, the yearnings, the aspirations, the principle and then the methodology of the training of nurses in this country.
NNRM: What other programmes does your administration have for the benefit of nurses in Nigeria?
3As: Nigerian nurses are the resources for the attainment of professionalism for nurses in Nigeria. As a result the unified scheme of service is foremost and we are going to pursue it to the last.
The effectiveness and the result of education transformation in nursing practice in Nigeria will be pursued to the last and by the inauguration of the board of the nursing council of Nigeria, we are going to have a compact body to ensure that the success of the educational transformation is made realizable in due course. Not only this, we are talking about membership drive, we are going to ensure that there is no disparity among the treatment that is given to federal health nurses, state health nurses, local government health nurses and those in private practice.
We have as part of our manifesto as well to ensure we bridge the gap between the old and the new i.e. integration, we have as part of our programme networking even not only in Nigeria but outside and to ensure that the defence of the rights and privileges of Nigerian nurses is done to the highest place, the welfare of our members shall be taken so serious and we have as part of our agenda to ensure that we motivate the student body, because it is the young ones of today that will be the leaders of tomorrow, by involving them in leadership training and by ensuring that we have a bonafide body that will encompass all nursing students in Nigeria to be able to learn about leadership and leading so that by the time they come to lead Nigerian nurses, there will not be any generation gap. We have also the feeling that Nigerian nurses deserve more infrastructural development investment, so we have as part of our plans to ensure that there is wise investment of the resources of Nigerian nurses.
We will not relent on our reconciliation efforts because reconciliation and reconciliation and reconciliation will bring about unity, bring about a unified front and bring about a body of NANNM that will transform us into a puerile body as contained in our vision and mission statement. We wish Nigerian nurses will hold us with trust and do not throw away our manifesto. At the end of the four years, we would have touched every aspect of our manifesto.
NNRM: As a member of the yet to be inaugurated board of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, what should Nigerian nurses expect from the board especially in terms of effective and efficient running of the council?
3As: We are very close to our members and we know the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians as regard their expectation from the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria. With listening ears and being a grassroots person, we are going to ensure that the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria when eventually inaugurated meets the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerian nurses and that is by leading while others follow in our education planning, in our registration, training, examination, certification and licensing. Take for example, people are complaining about the time it takes you to relicense and by the grace of God, efficiency will come into this regard because already nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria is putting in place some measures that will make our relicensing as efficient as possible. By the grace of God, we are not going to relent in ensuring that nurses and midwives in Nigeria will be proud of the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria.
NNRM: Is there any relationship between NANNM and the West African College of Nurses?
3As: Well, the West African College of Nursing is a professional body and by the grace of God when you look into my manifesto, we were hoping at a national post graduate college for nurses and we can only achieve that through the West African College of Nursing. I am happy that on the planning table, the programme of the West African College of Nursing is already changing and there is a planned programme of four years that will be like that of any other professionals; the medical post graduate college and the pharmaceutical post graduate college of Nigeria.
We are working together with the nursing and midwifery council of Nigeria, and the West African College of Nursing to ensure that the product this college are well recognised and are placed in their fitting position in the scheme of things. As a result, we are looking in this college and we are going to work vigorously with the leadership of the college in Nigeria and in the West African sub region to ensure that we scale their programme up and we form a programme that will involve a rigorous academic exercise before you become a fellow and then this programme will be recognised all over the world.
The challenge we are having is that Nigeria is ahead of other countries in the West African sub region in terms of nursing practice, so the West African College of Nursing is trying to thread it softly to be able to carry other countries along. Only Ghana and probably Liberia are the countries trying to match up with Nigeria in professional nursing practice in West Africa, so that is the only thing that is holding the WACN back but with the introduction of four years academic and clinical based programme, the West African College of Nursing will be transformed by the grace of God and we have a very good working relationship with the WACN.
NNRM: In leadership, effective and efficient communication is a very tool, can NANNM boast of an effective and efficient website especially in these days of spiralling social media?
3As: We will benefit much in the current trend in social media and we want to assure you that before the end of this year, our website that has been moribund will come to live because already the job has been given to the person who is designing and will be hosting it very soon.
With it we know that there will be effective communication and we spend less to reach across to a vast majority of people. We are not unaware of one of the write ups on social media especially on nursing world about the website that the person was talking about. We want to reassure that person that not because that person has just written about it on nursing world, the programme has been ongoing and will soon hit the stage and by the time it hits the stage, all Nigerian nurses will know that we have a world class website for Nigerian nurses and midwives and ditto to the N&MCN.
NNRM: Sir, reports abound in the media about how the actions are injurious to members of the public, but apparently you find out that these persons referred to as nurses are actually not professional nurses but quacks. What efforts is the current NANNM leadership putting in place to ensure that quackery in nursing becomes a thing of the past?
3As: Well, quackery is a very dangerous trend, you see as much as we dread malaria, HIV/AIDS, the only thing quackery can be equated with is a fatal accident because a single mistake made by a quack will end the life of an individual.
The leadership of NANNM will collaborate with the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria to ensure that all ongoing cases in court are speedily attended to because I have to inform the public that there are various cases of quackery that are being prosecuted in the law courts in Nigeria and we are going to add more because anybody that is erring especially those aiding and abetting it has to be brought to book and the association has a disciplinary committee that has just being inaugurated just last month i.e. the ethics and disciplinary committee, this will work with the disciplinary committee of the N&MCN and by the grace of God, we want to work also with our outreach, the nursing and midwifery committees in each state to ensure that there is adequate monitoring and if need be, legal action will be taken against those people who are perpetuating this act of quackery because it is a criminal offence.
We are really going to have it as one of our programmes that has to be taken very serious, we enjoin nurses to also desist from contributing to giving nursing a bad image because if you train a quack or you are using a quack or you are patronising a quack, you are giving nursing a bad image. We know that quackery is giving us a bad image and we are not going to stop at anything.
We are going to vigorously work on this through the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, Nursing and Midwifery Committees in Nigeria and the law enforcement agents in this country to curb or at least stem the tide of quackery in Nigeria. Nurses are professionals, we know our bounds and as a professional nurse, you don't go beyond your bounds. If you do not go beyond your bounds, the issue of quackery will not come into place and you will not aid and abet it.
NNRM: As the president of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives, are you happy with the current image of nurses in the country?
3As: That's what I am trying to say, the image is not good but there are lots of misplaced image or misrepresentation, misplaced identity in the public, many at times people take the image of a quack or anything that happens, you know the bad thing in this country is that there is a lot of ignorance. When you enter the hospital, a medical records officer misbehave, when an attendant misbehaves, when even a pharmacist and even a doctor misbehave, what the Nigerian public will say is that nurses are misbehaving.
As a result, the image is not a very good one and in fact the media is also contributing a lot because like some entertainment industry players, the way they portray nurses is very bad and my association is working on a programme to ensure that we first and foremost engage in parley, education and mobilization of the entertainment industry to picture to the public what is the true position or image of the nurse as against what is presently being portrayed in the public; a nurse like an apprentice, a nurse as gossiper, a nurse as somebody who is not responsible in the public. This is very bad, a nurse as is being pictured in all this Nollywood/entertainment industry as somebody who has nothing to contribute positively to the society.
A nurse all over the world ideally is an equal professional to a doctor not an apprentice nor a slave to a doctor, you have to discuss as professionals because when a doctor is prescribing a drug, the nurse knows why the doctor is prescribing the drug, what is going to be the effect of the drug on the patient and as a result if you a nurse and you observe an adverse effect, you will be able to contribute your quota to restore normalcy in the use of drugs to a patient.
A nurse knows in the theatre knows what to be operated upon and what is not to be touched. He knows what instruments to be used and knows where to go from where a surgeon stops. As a result, in the intensive care unit, a nurse is a professional that is expected to operate at the same level, at the pedestal with a lab scientist, medical doctor, pharmacist or any other professional in the health sector. As a result, with a professional nurse in your practice, you are sure of efficient outcome and you are sure of a highly skilled person attending to you and you have a good outcome for whatever you have invested.
NNRM: On a final note, any word of advice or appeal to Nigerian nurses?
3As: Nigerian nurses are encouraged to look beyond the demoralising factors militating against us in the health care services in Nigeria and put in their best. Try to reincarnate the Nightingale era of a dedicated, committed and disciplined nurse that people will meet and then their problems are gone. I want to encourage Nigerian nurses that better days are still ahead. In the past, nursing practice was not like this but better days are coming ahead and as a result we should keep trust with the oncoming dispensation.
Equally, I want to advise us to research more, to go into further research and advance education so that we specialize in our areas and then become bonafide professionals and not just stop at the level of a general practitioner because it is in specialization that we have more authority. Not only this, we should interact, network and integrate services elsewhere, learn from nurses in diasporas and be in tune with global best practices so that we can compete favourably with other health care professionals.
Also to please stay in Nigeria, not to take only to remuneration and go out of this country though we know it is because of the universality of nursing practice. Elsewhere, like I was trying to say some doctors abroad jettison their MBBS certificates to practice nursing, they go to schools of nursing and we have list of them but the parochial view in Nigeria is that a doctor cannot go into nursing practice. It is happening in developed countries where they cannot practice and thus study nursing.
We are calling on Nigerian nurses to still maintain this stead not to look elsewhere for their future, not to look elsewhere for the attainment of their life ambitions and to take nursing profession as a calling, practice it conscientiously like our oath where we solemnly pledge to hold the profession into higher esteem and to do everything possible to uplift the image of the profession.
source : thenigerianvoice.com
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