Nigerian Doctors Defend Yourselves From Smooth-Talking Medical Jobbbers

The medical profession has over the years suffered a lot from rogues doctors and smooth-talking jobbers who are only interested in enriching themselves through sucking average Nigerian doctor dry. These jobbers constitute themselves into a small group that sit in their arcane covens and do obscene arithmetic of how easy to suck the busy and naive doctors dry.

We have done the rough math before. There are over 40,000 – 80,000 doctors in Nigeria. If each doctor pays 20-40 thousand naira in the name of a Building Levy, NMA would be raking in over 10 Billion naira this December, that is if Nigerian doctors are so naive as the jobbers think to let this broad daylight swindle materialize. An alleged Committee constituted to oversee this heist has not sat since its inauguration. It must be noted that this money is different from the 10-20 thousand naira raked in yearly as Practising Fees that are not accounted for to those paying the Practising Fees. This is not to talk about the 2 thousand naira paid by each doctor monthly to Branch NMA in states totalling 24 thousand naira per doctor annually.

The math shows that in a year, an average doctor of ten years standing pays N44,000.00 to NMA and MDCN. Add the purported Building Levy and you get N84,000.00 per doctor. Multiply with over 40,000-80,000 doctors in Nigeria and you get over N20Billion. This is almost the budget of a state in Nigeria. There is no road constructed, no electricity generated, no schools built. In NMA, we have nothing to show for all these recurrent marrow sucking escapades. Why? Because a few coven jobbers are making their personal investments from the sweat and blood of innocent doctors who meekly pay the money. At the end of the year, the state NMA Excos will dole out a cooked financial statement before an AGM that is manipulated into a haste to disperse late in the night, to retire the humongous expending and doling out of our common funds and tied to phantom expenditures. The National NMA looks the other way, so that states in turn would not challenge the financial prescriptions, recklessness and expenditures of the National NMA. They maintain this symbiotic relationships to the detriment of the welfare and revenue of the average poorly-paid Nigerian doctors who ironically pay the money.

What we see today is another desperation from jobbers who can do anything and say anything to subtly threaten innocent Nigerian doctors into considering paying an illegal extortion. It must be expressly stated here that Nigerian doctors are not required by any Law in Nigeria to pay levy to anybody before they can pay their Practising Fees. Why would a few jobbers burn their late midnight oil concocting stories aimed at cajoling doctors who have squarely ignored the illegal Building Levy imposition in 2019 as well as in the coming 2020 practising years. How much is their share in the proposed imposed Building Levy. Why are they desperate. Are Nigerian doctors not wise enough to separate Practising Fees from the illegal Building Levy. May we ignore any post purporting to suggest that doctors need a second thought on the jobbers’ job.

The Federal High Court sitting in Enugu today fixed January 30th for the continuation of sitting on the main suit challenging the imposition of an illegal Building Levy on doctors before they could pay their statutory Practising Fees. We are grateful to the Honourable Court for insisting that the suit would be pursued to a logical conclusion. The Honourable Court is sought to declare illegal the use of MDCN portal for the collection of NMA building levy. The court has also been asked to declare MDCN online validation after the payment of Practicing Fees as illegal. The Honourable Court has also been asked to declare the annual renewal of License as an illegal exercise that has no legal support in Nigeria. Doctors are only required by the extant medical laws to pay Practising Fees, and not to annually renew License. The Cornerstone Insurance sales are yet another item the Court is called upon to invalidate. The structure and anatomy of NMA where members are always ignored during the taking of humongous decisions affecting Nigerian doctors is also under the hammer of the Honourable Court.

The process of paying for your Practising Fees is still the same way you did it last year. Generate remita RRR (N10,000.00 or N20,000.00 as the case may be depending on your year of standing), go to any bank with the RRR and pay. Keep your remita receipt. That is all you need to practice next year.

The issue of Building Levy came up last year. Nigerian doctors ignored them and paid their Practising Fees through remita. It is still the same method this year. We all practised to the end of this year without any License processed. I for one have practiced for the past 5 years without processing any renewal of License because it is not in our laws. All I did was pay my statutory Practising Fees. The Court will lay this illegal Building Levy to rest on the judgment day. There is no judgement yet. Do not allow jobbers who are only after their share in the defunct Building Levy to deceive you with their contrivances. They are empty. The Court Registrar of the Federal High Court Enugu has ordered the Court Bailiffs to serve NMA and MDCN with the new date for the Court sitting. This information is already circulated. One then wonders where the jobbing desperadoes are getting their own misinformation that the suit is over.

Our struggles have even been fortified further by a new development. All the house officers who were forced to pay the Building Levy before they could be issued with their provisional license, and other doctors who were forced to pay the Levy one way or the other, are already signing up for immediate refund of the extortion through a different suit at the Federal High Court. This is heartwarming.