By Joy Odor Reportcircle News
After years of simmering disputes, walkout threats and strained negotiations, the Federal Government has moved decisively to confront some of the most combustible fault lines in Nigeria’s health sector: crushing workloads, opaque locum practices and the long-running controversy over residency training certification.
On Thursday in Abuja, the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, inaugurated two high-powered ministerial committees, signalling what officials describe as a turning point in how government manages the welfare, training and retention of health professionals.
The intervention, coming amid worsening doctor shortages and persistent industrial unrest, is designed to address structural issues that have repeatedly pushed hospitals to the brink and driven skilled professionals out of the country.
At the heart of the move is an acknowledgement the system is overstretched.
Speaking at the inauguration, Dr. Salako said excessive work hours, inconsistent locum engagement and unresolved certification disputes have become recurring flashpoints between government and health sector unions, undermining morale and patient safety.
“These are not new issues,” he said. “But they have reached a point where they must be resolved decisively and sustainably.”
The first committee, titled the Ministerial Committee on Work Hour Regulation and Locum Engagement Policy, is tasked with confronting what many doctors describe as punishing duty schedules that leave little room for rest, learning or recovery.
Salako warned that excessive work hours pose risks beyond staff burnout.
“When health workers are exhausted, patient safety is compromised,” he said, placing Nigeria’s challenge within a global context.
He cited World Health Organisation projections that the worldwide health workforce gap could hit 11 million by 2030, a crisis compounded locally by the steady migration of Nigerian doctors and nurses to Europe, North America and other developed economies.
In response, he said the government has taken steps over the past 21 months to strengthen the workforce, including introducing a Health Workforce Migration Policy, easing employment bottlenecks, improving remuneration and expanding training quotas.
According to him, 14,444 health workers were employed in 2024, while 23,059 recruitments were approved in 2025, with more than 70 per cent being clinical staff.
Yet gaps remain and locum engagement has become both a lifeline and a loophole.
Originally intended as a stopgap, Salako admitted that locum arrangements are often applied unevenly and, in some cases, abused.
The new committee is expected to conduct a nationwide audit of work hours and shift patterns, assess their impact on patient outcomes and worker wellbeing, and engage unions, regulators and hospital managers.
Its mandate includes drafting a national policy on safe hospital work hours, rostering and locum engagement covering maximum duty hours, mandatory rest periods and clearer pathways from locum roles to permanent employment.
The committee has 12 weeks to submit its initial report.
“This will form part of a new deal for health professionals,” Salako said, adding that government intends to act swiftly on the panel’s recommendations.
The committee is chaired by the Director of Hospital Services at the Ministry, Dr. Abisola Adegoke, mni, and brings together regulators, hospital administrators, health unions and professional bodies, a deliberate attempt, officials say, to balance policy with lived experience.
The second committee targets a different but equally sensitive pressure point: the certification and recategorisation of resident doctors.
Known as the Appraisal Committee on Certification and Recategorisation Policy, the panel will review complaints by resident doctors over the non-issuance and reclassification of membership certificates by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) and the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria (NPMCN).
These disputes, championed by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), have repeatedly fuelled strikes and protests across teaching hospitals.
Chaired by Professor Muhammad Raji Mahmud, Chief Medical Director of the National Hospital, Abuja, the committee is expected to conduct a transparent review of existing policies, particularly demands for the issuance of membership certificates after Part I examinations.
It has eight weeks to submit its recommendations.
In their acceptance remarks, both committee chairs struck a conciliatory tone.
Dr. Adegoke said the work-hours panel would put “a human face” to its assignment, drawing from the lived realities of overworked resident doctors.
Professor Mahmud assured stakeholders that the certification review would be guided strictly by fairness, justice and equity across the profession.
In a closing vote of thanks, Dame Francisca Okafor, Director of Regulatory and Professional Schools in the Ministry, described the inauguration as a critical step toward restoring stability and dignity in the health sector, praising the minister for what she called decisive leadership.
For a system strained by emigration, burnout and recurring industrial action, the committees represent more than bureaucratic housekeeping.
They are an attempt to redraw the social contract between government and health workers and to answer a question that has grown louder in hospital corridors: how long can Nigeria’s doctors keep running on empty?
