In an interview with the National President of NARD, Dr. Godiya Ishaya said the decision to halt the strike was taken after a careful analysis of the progress they had achieved on their demands. He added that the striking physicians would officially resume work tomorrow, October 6, 2021.

Ishaya said that the strike’s postponement was not based on recommendations from their parent organization, the Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, yesterday, said the National Executive Council, NEC, held a full-day meeting on October 1 to review the strike’s progress and weigh what they had been able to achieve that could motivate their members to consider suspending the protracted strike.

“We met on October 1, 2021, but went on recess to allow NEC members to return to their respective congresses and have a robust discussion of what we were able to push through and resume,” he said.

‘’So, after considering them and considering the positions of the various congresses, we have decided to officially halt the strike, which will begin on October 6 at 8:00 a.m. That was the stance that was adopted.

“We chose to officially resume on Wednesday (tomorrow) since some of our members who traveled had to return, and people are reluctant to travel at night because of the insecurity in the country.

‘’To give them time to travel during the day and transmit the news that the strike has been postponed, we decided on Wednesday. We were also attempting to prevent some of them from having conflicts with their immediate supervisors.”

When asked if all of their demands had been met, Ishaya, who couldn’t say yes or no, explained: “When we looked at the demands, there were points that had been significantly addressed and there were some that had been stalemated because the government was invoking the Trade Dispute Act on us and those parts the government was invoking state that you shouldn’t pay any remuneration to any employee who has engaged in any form of lockout or strike’.

“Some of the minimal demands were difficult to achieve since they say they won’t pay we are on strike. One of them was the fact that we demanded that some of our members should be enrolled into IPPIS and their arrears of four to six months be paid to them.

‘’The government said it had enrolled them but they are not able to pay-roll them because we are on strike and without being pay-rolled, they cannot get their arrears.

‘’So that was the stalemate that we had with the government, in addition to the issue of medical residency.’’

According to him, the government demanded that they had not received any salary since their migration to IPPIS in order to check if they were the true owners of those accounts.

‘’As a result, we must provide a window for their salaries to be paid in order to identify their accounts, and their arrears will be transferred into those accounts as well. “We thought there was a deadlock there that needed to be broken,” Dr. Ishaya explained.

Since August 2, 2021, striking doctors have been on a statewide indefinite strike to press their demands.