By RismadarVoice Reporters
January 4, 2026
Doctors across Nigeria have identified the full implementation of existing health policies and agreements as the most critical step the Federal Government must take to prevent recurrent industrial actions in the health sector in 2026.
The Physicians warned that the government’s persistent failure to implement already approved frameworks and agreements remains a major source of unrest in the sector, continues to fuel strikes by healthcare workers.
The warning comes against the backdrop of repeated industrial actions that characterized the health sector in 2025, including strikes by resident doctors and allied health workers that disrupted services nationwide.
On November 1, 2025, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) embarked on a strike over unresolved issues such as poor remuneration, staff shortages, unpaid allowances and unsafe working conditions. About 11,000 resident doctors withdrew services across 91 teaching hospitals, specialist hospitals and federal medical centres, paralysing clinical care.
The situation worsened on November 15 when the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) began an indefinite strike, further limiting access to healthcare services, including in emergency cases.
Although the Federal Government later released ₦50 billion in November 2025 to offset outstanding arrears for health workers, doctors said the intervention failed to address their specific claims.
NARD estimates that the government still owes doctors and other health workers about ₦38 billion in accumulated allowances.
President of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Prof. Bala Audu, said doctors were not demanding new policies, but the execution of existing ones.
“For doctors, and indeed for all healthcare providers, there is only one major expectation: the full implementation of existing policies,” Audu said.
“The quality of any policy is meaningless if it is not executed. All the reforms we need already exist. What is lacking is implementation.”
He identified the Health Workforce Retention Policy, the National Health Act, and the Presidential Initiative on Health Sector Value Chain Development as key policies that remain largely unimplemented years after approval.
According to Audu, industrial actions in the health sector are rarely spontaneous, are usually the result of unresolved agreements and prolonged policy failures.
“If the government fails to implement these agreements, agitation will naturally continue. But if it does, the health sector will be stable, Nigerians will have access to quality healthcare,” he said.
The NMA President also warned that continued loss of skilled professionals was weakening the system, noting that workforce shortages were increasingly limiting service delivery.
On his part, NARD President, Dr. Mohammad Suleiman, urged the Federal Government to prioritise doctors’ welfare, citing unpaid salary, promotion and specialist allowance arrears dating back as far as 2017.
“There are salary arrears ranging from four months to over 20 months. Promotion arrears from 2017, 2018 and 2020 are still unpaid, and specialist allowances remain outstanding,” Suleiman said.
He also faulted the non-implementation of the corrected professional allowance table, which he said had been approved but was yet to reflect in doctors’ salaries, discrepancies in entry-level placement that have led to monthly losses of between ₦120,000 and ₦250,000 for affected doctors.
Meanwhile, the Lagos State Chairman of the NMA, Dr. Babajide Saheed, called for improved remuneration for healthcare workers and urgent steps to curb the ongoing emigration of medical professionals, popularly known as the “Japa” syndrome.
He also urged the Minister of Health to focus more on healthcare delivery, adopt a more inclusive and respectful approach towards resolving disputes with doctors’ unions.
Doctors said unless the Federal Government urgently implements existing agreements and policies, industrial unrest in the health sector is likely to persist into 2026.
