Signing of Electoral Bill will ensure stability of electoral process ― Wole Olanipekun

Olanipekun who stated this in Ondo town,  while speaking with journalists after he delivered a lecture at the Ondo State University of Medical Sciences (UNIMED), Ondo, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the Electoral Bill into law before the next year’s general election.

He advised President Buhari to guarantee electoral credibility in the country and should not allow the difference between him and the National Assembly to affect the electoral processes

Olanipekun said “I would advise that for the stability of our democratic and electoral process that the Electoral Act be signed and whatever might be the differences between the presidency or the executive and the legislature, the differences must be resolved.

“The ‘I’ must be dotted, the ‘ts’ must be crossed and everything must be cleansed and signed into law before the election in the interest of our democracy and nation.”

Olanipekun also advocated for the restructuring of the medical sector in the country in such a way that one specialized hospital would be established in each of the geopolitical zones by the Federal Government.

According to him, each of the well-equipped hospitals, the legal luminary said would be able to take care of the people in the zones and check capital flight which is common in the medical sector in the country.

While delivering his lecture with the title: “Ethics, Law and Medicine as Foundation for Good Health and National Development” the former NBA Chairman frowned over the mass exit and an inadequate number of medical doctors in the country and raised the alarm over the poor welfare condition of medical doctors in the country.

He said Nigeria can earn foreign exchange from medical tourism rather than spending billions of dollars on a medical trip in a foreign land by those seeking solution to their medical problems.

He said the legal and medical professions are the most regulated by bodies of standards in relation to their clients, placing more emphasis on the Hippocratic Oath as it relates to the latter.

He said “It has been settled that as between the legal and medical callings, ethics plays a very fundamental role, not only in the training of each of the two sets of professionals but also in the practice of their trade after their respective calls or inductions.

“Ethics and law are very fundamental to the advancement, enhancement, progress and development of any nation.”

He said the foundational principle of good law and ethical codes are ways to recover the nation’s developmental strides, especially using law and medicine as fulcra for the rediscovery of Nigeria’s pride to chart enduring ways of performance.

Olanipekun, however, lamented the incessant foreign drifts of medical, revealing that about 40,000 of the 75,000 registered medical doctors in the nation were practising outside Nigeria in 2017.

He said “Looking at the astonishing number of doctors that have left Nigeria in the past few years, it is safe to conclude that medical practice in Nigeria is currently undergoing a brain drain.

“There has been no major recruitment of doctors, whether by state or Federal Government, and even those recruited by them only consider their employment as a temporary fix, a transitory event until they can conclude their plans to emigrate to other favourable climes.”

The former NBA boss noted that the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, used to rank among 10 best teaching hospitals in the entire Commonwealth until its fortune nosedived in the mid-eighties.