Good day, elders and colleagues. With your kind permission, I say with due respect that “igba ara l’aa búra…”.
At the launch of this strike on earlier in September, yours truly proposed that that was only the “first phase” and that we might have to “modify the modality of the strike” at some point. I do not identify as a seer but we entered the ‘second phase’ in the same month with consequent ‘developments’.
There is now a clear handwriting on the wall that the well-intentioned industrial disharmony we launched to demand our entitlement from the Ogun State Government has weighed our unity, measured our harmony, and found us wanting. If you disagree, and you are well entitled to as a member of NMA Ogun, make it a point of duty to evaluate and listen to words spoken, implied, and outrightly un-uttered at EGM.
Before we are swayed by sentiments, let us again revisit the facts (perhaps for the last time):
✓ that as Nigerian doctors we have been entitled to a reviewed Hazard Allowance for two years now
✓ that we were finally promised payment of same in March of this year on the condition that the incumbent Governor secure a second term while we do not disrupt the peace of the State and provide fodder for his opponents by shutting down the health sector
✓ that we had his didymus in our manus at the time and we decided not to evoke torsion believing they were men of their word — or are they?
✓ that said Governor in fact secured the unlikely second term without any disruption from our end
✓ that we did not get said Hazard Allowance in April, May, June or July, until we held an AGM in August and threatened to go on strike three weeks after.
✓ that in July our subsidy palliative allowance (40% of basic salary) was substituted for the postterm Hazard Allowance and arrears, and we were summarily shortchanged to the astonishment of the general assembly
✓ that the Government is setting an ugly precedent for any further agitation from us with the non-acknowledgement of any wrongdoing on her part and the associated refusal to pay any arrears!
✓ that payment of anything other than arrears does not offset the shortchange we suffered like nobodies.
Should we continue on this path, the future is clear: we would not have won anything, whatever we think we won was in fact handed over to us in a shortchange, and the Government can always threaten us with No Work No Pay, now and next year and forever.
As medics, our training is to analyse issues, identify causes and proffer treatment. We must not be the proverbial physician whose child died in daytime. Can we in our thousands not engineer an antidote to the government’s siren? Of course we can, if we put our heads together and band together.
To be clear, the strike has not served its purpose but it has now been overtaken by events. The solution is never to abandon ship, the solution is to take a step back and reevaluate. The only way to achieve the initial purpose is to be able to continue as one come what may — even if we have to take a recess, catch a breath, and launch _our_ antidote.
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin…
May we be able to forge ahead (victorious) in unity going forward…
Amen, …enikan ii bu Sango l’ẹẹrun!_
Member via NAGGMDP
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