FG: Nigeria Can Earn from its Brian Drain

Kuni Tyessi

The federal government has said that Nigeria would make huge profits from the migration of Nigerian medical doctors to foreign land.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Mr. Sonny Echonu, stated this yesterday during a one-day workshop on national policy in science and technology education and its implementation guidelines.

Echonu said the issue of brain drain, which is being looked at holistically by the government would be resolved soon.

He, however, said that the current migration of the medical doctors was poorly timed; adding that the federal government is making efforts to tackle the issue is through the establishment of more medical institutions and improved access to medical services.

Echonu said: “It’s a holistic problem and something that we have to address, not only as a government, but also as a people. The medical field is one of the areas where we have deficit and that is being addressed by the government through the establishment of new institutions. You can see that there are specialised medical institutions being established.

“Government is also expanding access because if you look at JAMB records medicine is one with the highest applicants where you have over subscriptions of over ten to one. But the reality is that it takes a lot of investment to train a doctor as in other fields.”

So we are looking at it from a holistic package.

“Once we get it right, there’s no too much harm in being able to produce manpower for profit. If you notice what our Diaspora community is repatriating, it is even more than what we are earning from oil and many countries depend on this.

“Why this is a challenge we want to avoid is that we have not satisfied our local demand, and that is why the issue of skills gap analysis comes in, knowing that what we need for our economy to function efficiently and once we have met that thresh hold, it will be nice to export and we can now earn from it.

“Many countries depend on this. If you go to hospitals in India and the United Kingdom, you will see that many are managed by Diaspora community. So what we are saying is that the timing is wrong and we are calling on the Nigeria Medical Association, and we are in talks with other experts, to see how we can resolve the impasse.”