By Hussein Adoto Bello
In the first rotation of my clinical training at a federal government university teaching hospital in North Central Nigeria, resident doctors went on strike to protest the kidnapping of their colleague in Kaduna. The government threatened “no work, no pay.” Students lost a week of clinical training. The victim wasn’t released until weeks later.
When I reached the second rotation, I was greeted midway with a warning strike by consultants protesting the non-payment of their arrears. Classes came to a halt, and we, the students, had to hustle for an extension.
Now, in the third rotation, the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN) has declared another strike. Students will once again be the victims, but life will continue.
Medical students may be called the next generation of residents and consultants, but when push comes to shove, we are the first to be thrown under the bus. And then patients. Classes stop. Clinics and theatres become skeletal, attending only to critically ill patients and emergencies.
For students, the situation becomes a matter of finding X, where X is the number of days, weeks, or months the “warning” strikes will go before they are suspended or transform into indefinite strains.
What can we do? Unlike Mour Ndiaye in The Beggars’ Strike, the people who put students in this limiting position don’t need us to survive. We don’t pull enough academic or professional weight to influence their advancements as doctors, consultants, and professors. They can resume whenever and however.
Government officials know they can keep students at home for nearly a year without hurting their chances at the polls. The students may even fight tooth and nail for them.
The never-seen-but-felt hands of the hospital and the university management don’t need student crutches to do as they please. Their appointment is not premised on how long students spend in school or patients’ satisfaction. Students and patients are all left to gnash their teeth in the Academic and Clinical Waiting Area while the royal rumble rages.
It’s not easy, therefore, to try playing Nguirane Sarr. The clever blind beggar realised that beggars have services they can withhold in light of their harassment, which made a difference in The Beggars’ Strike.
What do students have? Twitter/X hashtags and a lot of God abegs! Boycotting classes, clinics, and theatre may not help; it will only transform an acute case into a chronic one.
Students in Algeria went on strike to demand more residency openings and accreditation of their diplomas. It’s been weeks, and the issue has yet to be resolved.
Moroccan students revolted against the shortening of their programmes from seven years to six by declaring a strike in January. December is less than two weeks away.
Meanwhile, medical students here rarely face such massive blows at once. We adjust to the worsening learning difficulties until we graduate, leaving the next generation of students to endure the crucible. Resilience, after all, is an undeclared objective of medical training.
We are not equally affected, either. A clinical student has a different worry than those still struggling with anatomy and biochemistry in preclinical classes. A strike by ASUU lecturers may not be felt in the clinics. Students in private schools are largely immune to what happens to their colleagues in government universities, and so on.
For now, one can only hope—rather than expect—that the country establishes independent arbitration bodies for resolving labour issues promptly without sacrificing hapless students and patients at the altar.
Such a body should include representatives from labour unions, the government, students, and neutral mediators to ensure impartial decisions are swiftly implemented. It should also be able to hold the government, employers, and labour unions accountable so that everyone can act with greater responsibility and not with the callous indifference that has come to characterise labour disputes in Nigeria.
Besides, labour unions and student bodies should organise themselves into a powerful lobby force that can successfully push for policies that serve their interests instead of waiting to use strikes to protect them.
More importantly, striking workers and the government should give students and patients an alternative to manage while they bicker. They should host virtual classes if they can’t come for physical ones. They should host clinics or virtual consultations if they can’t go for ward rounds and theatre sessions.
Thankfully for students, the ṣégé (difficulty) of strikes comes in aliquots, so we build tolerance until the situation rankles less and resistance becomes pointless. We only have to survive in brooding silence until we can escape the system with our scars or embrace it—like Ramatoulayé in So Long a Letter.
Hussein Adoto writes via bellohussein210@gmail.com.