Ngige: 'Other doctors are jealous of me, so they embark on strikes'

Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, thinks there is so much envy and jealousy in the medical sphere in Nigeria.

Ngige who is a medical doctor himself, thinks that doctors are embarking on so many strikes in Nigeria at the moment because they want to make him look bad and because they want to sabotage his ministry.

Speaking at the 2nd Summit of the Medical Elders Forum (MEF) on Thursday, August 12, 2021 in Abuja, Ngige said: "Since our government came on board, I have consolidated four strikes. Something is wrong.

“Doctors should ask themselves questions; why is it that it’s when your colleagues are in government that you go on the greatest number of strikes?

“We need to ask ourselves some questions and be straightforward with the answers.

“We must start by telling ourselves the truth. You say they dislike doctors, what did you do for them to dislike you?

“Yes, there is peer envy; yes, some wanted to study medicine and they couldn’t; we know it and you know it," he added.

Resident doctors have embarked on a slew of strike actions since Ngige became minister in the Buhari administration.

Frontline healthcare workers battling COVID-19 in Nigeria's isolation centers have also complained of being owed allowances and pledged salaries for months.

However, Ngige wants doctors to stop playing God.

“We are one of the oldest professions on earth, metamorphosing from natural and traditional healers to take away pain from people and consequentially save lives.

“We don’t create lives, God creates. We only preserve people’s lives through the act of God. In doing so, God has given us some powers and those powers are near his own to create.

“But, there is something God does not want. God does not want when he gives you powers, you use it to try to say that you are like him or you are competing with him.

“God loves you to do that which he has asked you to do; to use that power with humility," he said.

President Muhammadu Buhari has been tending to his health concerns in London at the feet of foreign doctors, since he was elected for a first team in office in 2015.

National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu, is also reportedly convalescing in London.