There are 2 main enviable professions in Nigeria – Law and Medicine. It is only a lawyer for instance, that can serve as Attorney General and Minister of Justice. The same is true of the position of Commissioner for Justice in a State. However, lawyers can be Ministers and Commissioners of other sectors – Education, Foreign Affairs and Commerce etc.
Similarly, it is only a medical doctor that can be a Minister of Health or a State Commissioner for Health notwithstanding that the health sector has several disciplines. This scenario where one privileged profession enjoys undiluted monopoly of prominence in a multi-disciplinary sector is however not a common practice across the globe.
In many other countries, the Head of a Ministry does not necessarily have to be a professional in any of the subject areas of the Ministry. The logic is that the post being a political one should be handled by a politician who is better positioned to place the activities of the Ministry in line with the manifesto of the ruling party.
File Photo: FEC members at one of their weekly meetings
Lawyers and doctors in particular do not allow this to happen in Nigeria. In the legal field, no other professional has ever headed our Justice Ministry. In the health sector, the doctors have always been up there except for the obscure period of the interim government, when Julius Adelusi Adeluyi-a first class pharmacist, served as Secretary for Health. But for the brevity of his tenure, no one was sure of the game plan of the doctors.
Again, there was the reported uneasy calm in the sector following the nomination of Dora Akunyili- the effervescent anti-fake drug crusader as a Minister until she was deployed to the Information Ministry. Thus, lawyers and doctors have sustained a well fought war of ascendancy in their sectors in Nigeria. So, is enough not enough?
It does not appear enough to medical doctors whose recent actions show that having clinched the substance; they do not also wish to leave even the crumbs to other disciplines. This is indeed what is playing out in the nation’s first university college hospital (UCH) in Ibadan where a medical doctor has just been appointed as Director of Laboratory Services. It is an appointment which is likely to grind the nation to a standstill as from May 03 2013, if the UCH authorities do not reverse it.
Already, the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (ALMSN) has alerted the nation of such imminent breakdown of industrial harmony in our health sector as a result of the development. Other associated groups- the National Union of Pharmacists, the Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, and Research Institutes etc have also issued a 2-week ultimatum to the UCH management on the subject.
Meanwhile, the ALMSN has made a fervent claim that the appointment of the medical doctor as UCH’s Director of Laboratory Services is a clear usurpation. Their National President, Dr. Goodwill Okara drove home the point with the argument that the position exists only in the statutory scheme of service for Laboratory Scientists.
It is therefore not a position for a medical doctor more so as it is not provided for in the scheme of service of physicians. If so, why is it possible to consider a medical doctor for it? The answer appears to lie in the allegation that the medical doctors have the support of the Minister of Health because he is one of their own.
As the nation approaches May 03, 2013, no one needs a soothsayer to predict either the high degree of chaos the subject would generate or its resultant hardship on the citizenry. Our Health Minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu should therefore take urgent steps to avert the danger. It is a duty he owes the nation. On its part, the UCH management needs to appreciate that the main goal of the hospital is health care for the people.
When an organization like the UCH is set up to execute a task, it should naturally divide the task into parts and assign them to its different components on the basis of division of labour. That is not all. The sharing of the task should also be premised on the principle of specialization where each relevant actor is assigned a specific role on the basis of his professed expertise and competency bearing in mind that no matter how mundane any assignment is perceived, some people are better endowed than others in executing it.
Utmost care must however be taken to ensure that the way the task is shared is not allowed to blur the fundamental principle that all those involved have the same goal. Thus, it is expedient to prevent the tendency whereby some departments hold on to a perception that others are of little or no value to the organization, by ensuring that everybody’s job is functionally related to the specified corporate goal.
If the UCH operates this basic management principle, it would have no business asking a medical doctor to guide laboratory scientists in their own profession. Rather, it would run UCH as a network typically consisting of different parts with organizational messages flowing among the parts. Consequently, it would find that the roles of the different groups are mutually reinforcing and that the malfunctioning of one part can have grave adverse effects on the entire process; making it clear that everyone is useful.
Accordingly, a nation’s health care delivery system is a goal which doctors alone cannot achieve. They should therefore learn to accord recognition to other relevant contributors. Thus, the UCH management ought to spare us all the agony of a breakdown in our health sector by letting the Medical Laboratory Scientists be. Oh yes, Nigerian doctors who are the only ones that can be Health Ministers or Commissioners as well as the only Chief Medical Directors in all hospitals should not also grab what belongs to another Caesar.
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