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The President of the Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Dr Muhammed Suleiman, has sounded a grim alarm over the sharp decline in the number of resident doctors across the country, describing it as a collapse that threatens the very foundation of tertiary healthcare.
Speaking with Newscentral on Monday, Suleiman said that Nigeria’s health system is bleeding talent and the warning lights are flashing red.
“Twelve years ago, we had about 16,000 resident doctors just at the federal level, six to seven thousand at the state level, and about a thousand in private tertiary institutions. Today, at the federal level, we have barely 9,000. At the state level, barely 1,500. In private facilities, barely 200. That number jumped by about 50 per cent in the wrong direction,” Suleiman said in a sobering assessment.
The statistics paint a dire picture. In just over a decade, Nigeria has lost nearly half its resident doctor workforce, even as its population has ballooned to an estimated 280 million, underscoring the unsustainable imbalance between healthcare capacity and population growth.
At the heart of the crisis is government policy that, according to Suleiman, has stripped resident doctors of their professional standing.
“Our membership certificate has been recategorised from a specialist status to just plain additional qualifications. The government described this as routine. It is not. It strips us of our academic pursuit, our excellence.” He said.
Beyond the bureaucratic blow, the human toll of this crisis is staggering. Nigerian hospitals are running on fumes, with a handful of doctors shouldering workloads meant for dozens, with Suleiman citing shocking examples of burnout and exploitation:
“The treasurer of NARD is a senior registrar in plastic surgery. He has been on call as the only senior registrar in that unit in his hospital since February.”
Even more troubling, he revealed that at the Federal Teaching Hospital (FTH), doctors are pushed to near-inhumane limits, with some taking 31 calls, and, to make matters worse, dissent is being punished.
According to the NARD President, the result is a vicious cycle: worsening working conditions drive doctors out of the system, often out of the country leaving those who remain to bear an even heavier burden and without immediate intervention, Nigeria risks a total collapse of its tertiary healthcare system, one already stretched to breaking point by dwindling workforce, policy missteps, and systemic neglect.
