Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe, lawmaker representing Kwara Central Senatorial District, has faulted a bill in the House of Representatives seeking to address medical and dental practitioners’ migration from the country.
A bill by Ganiyu Johnson (APC/Lagos) seeking to amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act, on Friday, passed the second reading in the House of Representatives.
According to the bill, Medical and Dental Practitioners would be mandated to practice in Nigeria for a minimum of five years before being granted ‘Full License by the Council in Order to Make Quality Health Services Available to Nigeria; and for Related Matters.’
But in his reaction, Oloriegbe, who is the Chairman Senate Committee on Health, expressed a dissenting opinion over the bill.
According to him, “the bill is not enough as a strategy to address the challenges of brain drain in the health sector.”
He stated that the factors responsible for brain drain in Nigeria’s health sector are multifaceted, adding that a “mere denial of full practice license to medical practitioners as contained in the proposal will never resolve and may even aggravate them.”
Continuing, the lawmaker noted that not only medical doctors are leaving the country for greener pastures abroad, “there are other health workers, as well as professionals in other fields of human endeavour, trained but leaving the country on daily basis for similar purposes, consequently, focusing attention only on the medical doctors is like curing one of many ailments that are threatening the life of a dying patient without finding solutions to the others.”
Senator Oloriegbe, who noted that the lawmaker sponsoring the bill does not understand issues in the sector, posited creating greener pastures in Nigeria as the way forward, adding that the bill violates freedom of movement.
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