Nurses under the umbrella of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, NANNM, have protested against the management of the Federal Medical Centre, Idi Aba, Abeokuta, Ogun State, over what they call terrible working conditions.
The health workers, during their protest on Wednesday, said their members collapsed on duties over work overload and due to an unconducive work environment.
The nurses protested against a shortage of manpower and an alleged exclusion from the 2023 promotion carried out in the institution.
During their peaceful procession on the hospital premises, they insisted that stiffer actions would be taken if nothing was done to alleviate their many sufferings.
The aggrieved workers, singing solidarity songs, brandished placards bearing different messages such as “Stop Selective Promotion,” “Nurses Workload is Enough for Promotion,” and “Nurses’ Lives Matter,” among others.
It was reported that the National President of NANNM, Michael Nnachi, recently lamented the loss of over 75,000 of their members to the outside world due to poor wages and an indecent working environment in the country.
Speaking for the protesters, the chairman of the FMC Abeokuta chapter of NANNM, Olufimilola Adekunle, said more than 200 nurses in the hospital have relocated abroad.
She added that less than 300 nurses are left in the institution to take care of hundreds of patients visiting the hospital daily.
Adekunle lamented that the nurses are exhausted and overworked due to the acute manpower shortage in the hospital.
“It is really tough to survive; we had to collapse three units together. We are going to merge some wards together; that is what we are planning to do immediately after this protest because we cannot bear it any longer.
“We want the government to come to our aid; we are working and we need to be paid for what we do. All our rights should be given to us. Our next action is to down tools. We are going to write them and stop working because, in the past months, we have seen our nurses collapsing.
“In the past two months, we lost two nurses. Our lives are important. The workload contributed to the deaths and our nurses collapsing on duty. The only thing we enjoy from the management is this promotion; we don’t benefit from them,” she said.
Reacting to the protest, the Head of Clinical Services of the hospital, Dr Kunle Adediran, explained that the issue regarding the promotion was beyond the management. The promotion of nurses, he said, is dependent on the dictates of the Federal Ministry of Health.
He, however, promised that the hospital would write to the Federal Government about developments at the hospital.
“We are all employees of the Federal Government and all that we do has to be done in compliance with the directives of the government. It is not entirely up to the management,” he said.
