Members of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Osun State Chapter, on Tuesday stormed the Osun State House of Assembly to protest the non-payment of their salaries in the last four months.
The doctors have been on strike for four months and have vowed to continue the strike until their demands are met.
With placard bearing different anti-government inscriptions, the doctors in their numbers marched to the Assembly complex, where they were received by the lawmakers, led by the deputy speaker of the house.
They expressed worries that the lawmakers had failed to intervene since the crisis started.
Osun NMA Chairman, Suraj Ogunyemi, lamented the level of hardship faced by the doctors due to the non-payment of their salaries since September 2015, saying private medical practitioners would be forced to join the strike, if nothing was done.
According to him, NMA Osun was constrained to embark on a three-day sympathy strike commencing on Wednesday.
He noted that all doctors working with the Federal Teaching Hospitals in the state would be involved in the strike action.
Addressing the protesters, Deputy Speaker of the House, Akintunde Adegboye, appealed to the doctors to be patient, promising that the House would look into the matter.
He called on the executive members of the NMA to come for dialogue on Wednesday so as to find a solution to the problem.
Reacting, Governor Rauf Aregbesola described the protests as mere blackmail, saying that his administration has made more than enough concessions for doctors to have shifted their positions and reason with the government.
He called on well-meaning Nigerians to objectively examine the issues involved in the demands of the doctors and see whether they are in tune with the realities of the current worsening global and national economic situation and how it affects Osun.
A statement signed by Director, Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the Governor, Semiu Okanlawon, said the doctors are demanding the impossible just as it said that the state had offered the best condition of service to all its workers including the doctors before the current financial challenges facing the entire country.
Government said in the face of the current economic realities, it remains unbelievable that doctors would insist that they would not be bound by the payment regime agreed to by over 39,000 other workers in the state which was arrived at after a rigorous deliberation on the finances of the state within the context of the national economic realities.
The statement said that it is an open secret that Nigeria is faced with critical financial challenges which have made many obligations impossible.
It said this was why the state came up with a very transparent formula for apportioning of its available resources, adding that this was agreed to by all categories of workers in the state.
It added: “The only way labour can do without the distrust of government is by setting up a committee with the labour constituting half of the composition and government half and a neutral person jointly accepted by us to be the head of the committee to be reviewing all the revenues and using the reality of the revenue to appropriate or apportion allocation to strategic and key areas of government, which is wages and running the government. We agreed and we are running government absolutely on that basis.
“That agreement came in August and in September; the doctors said they were not in any way bound by that agreement.
“There was no way we could back down because, in the first instance, other professionals had accepted the agreement reached with labour.”
The statement said the doctors have remained recalcitrant despite all entreaties by leading lights of the medical profession, adding “they refused the popular agreement, what should government do? How can we reverse a decision accented to and agreed with by over 39,000 workers because about 200 people are dissatisfied.”
