Poor Remuneration Behind Japa Syndrome – CMDs

Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of Teaching Hospitals have raised the alarm that doctors, nurses, and other skilled health workers are leaving the country in droves due to poor remuneration and other welfare packages.

According to them, tertiary health institutions were threatened with becoming empty because of the syndrome, and they called for urgent intervention to curb the impending health crisis.

Some CMDs, including Professor Wasiu Adeyemo of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Professor Jesse Abiodun of University College Hospital Ibadan, and Prof Emem Bassey of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, raised concerns at the 2025 budget defence session before the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions.

Professor Adeyemo told the committee that the rate at which medical workers were leaving the country was alarming, hence the need to act fast to address the situation.

He said, “People resign, not even retire, resign almost every day. Yes. In the next one or two years, we are going to have all our hospitals empty. We need to do something about the remuneration of all the health care workers.

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“Otherwise, the government is putting a lot of money into infrastructure, and we will have empty hospitals. The major reason why people leave is for economic reasons. Consultants are earning less than $1,000.”

The CMD gave details of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital’s 2024 budget performance. The hospital had a total budget of N19.2 billion, of which personnel had N13.57 billion and a total overhead of N33.2 million.

“In terms of performance and utilisation, total overhead was 100 percent as of December for the total Personnel, 91 percent performance, but the capital project 45 percent.

So outstanding is 55 percent. November and December are released today, so we would cover maybe about 85 percent,” he added.

The CMD stated that a total budget of N32.7 billion and a total overhead of N20.3 billion, which was better than that of 2024, had been proposed for the hospital in 2025.

For his part, Ibadan Teaching Hospital CMD, Professor Abiodun lamented the delayed release of budgetary allocations to the hospital, which he said has adversely affected its operations.

The CMD noted that the hospital was allocated N5,593,110,394 capital expenditure in the 2024 budget, but only 38 percent had been released, with an outstanding balance of 72 percent.

“For 2025, we are proposing N4,387,763,661 for capital. This is a bit less than what we had in 2024. And that’s because of this envelope system. We have to work with what we’re given. For the overhead, we have N690,006,464 only. There’s a bit of increase over 2024 because of the outrageous bills we are getting from Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company,” he noted.

The committee’s chairman, Hon. Patrick Umoh, decried the precarious situation facing tertiary health institutions in the country and assured them of legislative intervention.