Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has backed the declaration of an indefinite nationwide strike by the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) over the federal government’s plan to stop the implementation of the revised professional allowance table (PAT).
On Saturday, Shuaibu Ibrahim, NARD’s secretary-general, announced the decision after the association’s virtual extraordinary national executive council (NEC).
He said the strike scheduled to begin at 12am on Tuesday, April 7 was taken after the government plans to halt the allowance framework earlier agreed with the doctors.
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Reacting to the development on Sunday in a post on his X handle, Atiku said the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors should not have to beg for what has already been agreed upon.
He described the government’s action as “betrayal.”
The post read, “The Federal Government signed a deal on the Professional Allowance Table, and now it wants to abandon it. This is not governance; it is betrayal.
“Our resident doctors are the last line of defence in hospitals that are already collapsing. They work gruelling hours, in impossible conditions, for pay that insults their sacrifice. And now, the government seeks to take away the little that was promised? The Tinubu administration must demonstrate commitment to the issues: 19 months of unpaid Professional Allowance arrears; promotion arrears gathering dust; a Medical Residency Training Fund stuck in bureaucratic limbo; and a government that treats its doctors as an afterthought and remains unconcerned as they flee the country in droves.
“Every doctor Nigeria loses to the UK, Canada, or Saudi Arabia is a failure of leadership, not a failure of patriotism. You cannot ask people to serve a nation that refuses to honour its own word.
“I stand with NARD. Pay what you owe. Honour what you signed. Or explain to 200 million Nigerians why their hospitals will go dark on Tuesday.”
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