FCT Resident Doctors Threaten Indefinite Strike If No ‘Meaningful’ Dialogue • Channels Television

Resident doctors in the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) have threatened to embark on an indefinite strike if “meaningful dialogue” is not held within days to address their long-standing grievances, particularly the acute shortage of manpower in district and general hospitals.

Speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Tuesday, the chairman Association of Resident Doctors, FCTA, George Ebong, warned that the seven-day warning strike, which started on Monday, could escalate if government agencies fail to engage constructively with the union.

“There will be a reassessment by the Congress, and hopefully, the dialogue is going to be meaningful. And if it’s not meaningful, then the Congress will not have a choice but to impose an indefinite strike,” he said on the breakfast show.

At the heart of their concerns is the manpower gap across FCT hospitals.

According to Ebong, the FCT has 14 district and general hospitals, yet the shortage of doctors and specialists has left one doctor handling dozens of patients and procedures daily.

“We’re going to need as much as 200 or thereabouts. We don’t even have anything close to that,” he explained.

“We have a doctor seeing more than 30 patients, 40 patients. We have a doctor doing up to 10 caesarean sections,” Ebon said. “We have doctors who are on antidepressants. We have doctors who are on anti-hypertensives.”

According to him, Nigeria’s ratio of one doctor to about 10,000 patients is way short of the World Health Organization’s recommendation of one doctor to 230–250 patients.

The doctors’ demands extend beyond staffing. They include immediate employment of house officers and resident doctors, payment of arrears owed for up to two years, resolution of delayed or incomplete salaries, long-overdue promotions, restoration of training funds for residency programmes, and provision of basic hospital equipment and consumables.

Dr. Ebong cited disturbing examples: “At Wuse District Hospital, the X-ray machine has not worked for three years. In the dialysis unit, there are no consumables. In some labs, you can’t run tests at night or on weekends. Even basic medications are often unavailable at the pharmacy.”

He emphasized that these systemic failures not only affect doctors’ welfare but also compromise patient care.

“Our working conditions are not good. It’s putting so much stress on us, and until these things are sorted out within the next six days, it will be difficult for us to call off the strike because we need these things to be resolved before we can give our patients the best Health care,” he warned.

The doctors commenced their seven-day warning strike on Monday. The union said the decision followed resolutions reached at the end of its emergency general meeting held on Friday, September 5.