You’re lucky to have me as minister – Chris Ngige tells Nigerian doctors

The Minister of Labor and Employment, Chris Ngige, has said that Nigerian doctors are lucky to have him, a medical practitioner, as the current Minister of Labor.

Ngige said this when he received members of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and executive members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) who visited him at his office on Wednesday, in Abuja.

Speaking at the meeting, Ngige thanked the resident doctors for recently calling off their nine-week-old strike. He said

“The previous NARD leadership hoarded information from your members. Instead, things wouldn’t have degenerated,” he said.

There is no need to be pugilistic. We know that we have opposition to our government. It doesn’t mean that if we are doing something right, we should not be praised.

If the former NARD leadership were not playing politics, they should have reported well to their members, especially after the intervention of the Elders Forum of which the president and secretary-general of NARD were members.

You are lucky to have me, a medical doctor and health system manager here as the Minister of Labour and Employment. So, when the matter came, the issues are clear to me.

But, when you bring advice to both parties on how things should be done and it is thrown away completely, you leave us with no other option than to do what the law says that we should be doing. That was why I sent this matter to the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN).”