The Coalition of Parents of Foreign-Trained Medical Doctors have accused the Medical and Dental Association of Nigeria MDCN of what it termed as “serial and persistent breaches of the law and guidelines, arbitrariness, high-handedness, inconsistencies and injustices”.
The Coalition during a joint press conference in Kano state, Northwest Nigeria claimed that the MDCN has breached both its own laws and national on issue of registration and internship of their children.
“We would like to crave your indulgence to take a look at the following clause which is a provision in MDCN’s Red Book. On registration of Medical and Dental Practitioners Act, CAP M8,2006, Sections 8, 11, 12 & 14.
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“Nigerian graduates of accredited foreign medical schools are entitled to enable them undertake their internship. However, Nigerian graduates of unaccredited foreign medical schools, as well as all expatriate medical doctors from all foreign medicals, who do not posses recognized professional post-graduate qualifications, are required to sit and pass Council’s assessment examination before they can be registered.” The said quoting the laws.
The Parents Coalition thereby emphasized that “despite this provision, and after establishing through EPIC (Electronic Portfolio of International Credentials) that the medical and dental graduates attended accredited medical schools, the MDCN has continued to subject the doctors to unnecessary assessment exams at high cost, before the registration or internship.
“It is worthy of note that this Red Book, which was supposed to be available to all doctors, was not known by many; it was hidden by the MDCN. It was when this agitation began that the MDCN surreptitiously placed it on their website.” The Parents said.
Chairman of the Coalition of Parents of Foreign-Trained Medical Doctors Alhaji Rabiu Yaradua noted that the demand for justice from the MDCN will continue until justice is done.
“We will continue to demand from MDCN transparency, due process and compliance with procedure and the law.”
Though Daily News 24 could not reach the MDCN’s Registrar, Dr Tajudeen Sanusi, in a similar story published by Daily Trust Newspaper, he said the council has a curriculum and syllabus, and is contained in the Red Book, contrary to what the foreign-trained medical graduates said.
He said because of the kind of training they had and their massive failure, the council came up with a special curriculum for a six-month programme in selected six teaching hospitals from each of the geopolitical zones.
He said the N900, 000 fee was not to be paid to the council but to the hospitals. However, he said the foreign trained medical graduates went to the National Assembly and the lawmakers directed that the six-month training programme should be dropped.
“So what else do they want us to do? We did not make it compulsory for anybody. We said go and train wherever you want to train and present yourself for the exams,” he said.
On resit exams, Sanusi said the MDCN is a regulatory body and its assessment examination is not a university examination where there is room for resit.
“When they sit WAEC, JAMB or NECO and fail, do they resit?’’ he asked.
He said the issue of doing youth service does not arise as they are not competent enough to handle patients.
“Someone who has not been certified to be able to treat patients will be mobilised for youth service as what?” he asked.
Sanusi said JAMB handled the computer based test for the council and only a technical issue happened during the exam.
“JAMB was unable to load the questions over night from Abuja so they had to charter a flight that morning to Sokoto, so instead of the exam starting by 9am, it started by 10:30am, that was what happened,” the MDCN registrar said.
He said, “They cannot intimidate anybody. We have a responsibility in the council to safeguard the health of Nigerians and other people living in this country without fear or favour. We don’t train them, and these people are not even allowed to practise in those countries where they trained.
“What we are doing for them is called damage control. Some of them are not even qualified to sit for our examination. They are our children. If they don’t accept them over there, can we throw them away? That is why we put up a programme for them but they complained and we removed it, yet they are complaining.
“We would not allow people that are not competent to have access to our patients and start killing people.”
He described the medical programme in Ukraine as a fraud, saying Russia is the language of expression there but they hurriedly set up a parallel programme because of the quest for medical education by students from English-speaking developing countries.
“They don’t train them using patients. They train them using mannequins only. They don’t even see or touch patients and they are coming here to talk rubbish,” he said.
The MDCN announces that the next Assessment Examination of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria is scheduled to hold from Wednesday 8th June to Thursday 9th June 2022 at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto, Sokoto State.
