Resident doctors to begin nationwide strike on Tuesday, leaving public hospitals in crisis

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors has declared an indefinite nationwide strike starting at midnight, Tuesday, April 7, citing the Federal Government's reported plan to scrap a professional allowance agreement that doctors say was already signed, sealed, and supposed to be in their accounts.

The association's Secretary General, Dr Shuaibu Ibrahim, described the government's move as a betrayal. 

"The National Executive Council was informed about the Federal Government's decision to remove the Professional Allowance Table, a development deemed unfortunate," he said, after a virtual emergency meeting on Saturday that ended with one resolution: strike.

For context, after a prolonged strike in 2025, NARD and the Federal Government reached an agreement that included improved pay for resident doctors, covering call duty, shift allowances, rural posting incentives, and non-clinical duties. 

Implementation was promised for January 2026, then pushed to February. Now, NARD says the government is planning to pull the plug on the whole thing by April, three months after it was supposed to have started.

Doctors are asking for the reversal of that decision, immediate payment of promotion and salary arrears in affected hospitals, settlement of 19 months of outstanding professional allowances, and the prompt payment of the 2026 Medical Residency Training Fund.

None of these are new demands. Most of them appeared on the list the last time doctors went on strike.

That is precisely the problem. Nigeria's public health system runs on a cycle that has become painfully predictable: strike, negotiation, agreement, partial implementation, another strike. 

Each time, it is ordinary Nigerians who absorb the cost. Outpatient services shut down, surgeries get postponed, and patients in tertiary hospitals are discharged or turned away. The people who can afford private care leave, while everyone else waits.

Resident doctors are not unimportant to this system; in most public tertiary hospitals, they handle the majority of patient care on a daily basis. 

Nigeria already has roughly one doctor for every 5,000 patients in underserved areas, a ratio the World Health Organisation says should be one to 600. An indefinite strike will stretch that gap and break it open.

As of today, the Federal Government has not responded publicly to NARD's announcement. The strike begins in less than 24 hours.

For millions of Nigerians with appointments, pending surgeries, or family members currently admitted in public hospitals, it is a development worth observing.

Read Next: Thousands of Nigerian nurses can’t work or “japa” because NMCN has refused to release their certificates