A certificate of good standing is simply an official medical background check. It doesn't need all the ceremony they are giving it, and it should be significantly cheaper than what it currently costs.
This is just a tool for the government to try to control doctors, and I believe that it should be taken with all seriousness. I wasn't joking when I said it was wise for concerned parties to involve their respective medical organisations.
The reason is simple: this is just testing the waters to see what you guys would tolerate. Tomorrow they extend it, or add another ridiculous requirement. Instead of improving and advocating for doctors' welfare, they're in cahoots with the government to stagnate career progression.
COGS is issued free in the UK and takes up to 10 working days. In the US, it costs between $10 and $50 in most states (so even cheaper than the Nigerian version), and in most places you get an instant digital certificate. Even the manual boards take a few weeks. You see the same story across much of Europe, Australia, etc.
This is something that should be properly addressed now. It will start as a small snowball and grow into an avalanche of regulations.
I tell my non-medical folks that if they think the Nigerian health system is terrible, then they should imagine what they’d think if they know what healthcare workers know about the system. The average outsider is only privy to a fraction of the mess we are in.
Healthcare workers are overcompensating, improvising, and covering up systemic lapses that should otherwise have made the entire system collapse a while ago. Patients and the relatives are also forced to make sacrifices and pay heavily to remedy the situation.
The outsider sees that the lab is delaying result. The healthcare worker sees that there is no light to process samples because the hospital is owing electricity bill and someone is sitting on the money.
Full blood count takes up to a week because a tertiary health facility still processes their samples manually, and you won’t even get platelet count and haemogblobin concentration. The patient thinks it is just a delay, meanwhile, the result isn’t even complete.
You’re finding it difficult to see a consultant because there is only one in the state, covering multiple government (and private hospitals) and their annexes.
For every fault you see, there is a rot that runs much deeper and someone has painted over it like all is well.
Vote out Tinubu in 2027.
I’m very big on trust. If you earn my trust, you can have my world.
So I enlisted in the US Army, and my girlfriend (now wife) had full access to my bank accounts. At the time, she was a postgraduate student, earning stipend from the university.
I went off to 12 weeks of Basic Training, meaning, no phone, no outside contact, nothing. Before leaving, I set up all my bills and gave her access to my bank apps. Car loan, rent, phone bills, everything. My three months’ salary was paid into the account.
This amazing woman handled it all. She kept an Excel sheet tracking every dollar that came in and went out. She planned our entire wedding by herself and didn’t go overboard on spending, not even once. Since then, we’ve operated a single joint account. Six years later, we’ve never had a reason to change it, and monthly, we still get a Google spreadsheet tracking every dollar.
Our only line of communication during training was letters exchanged at night roll call if the Drill Sergeant was in a good mood. Sometimes we got 5–10 minutes of phone time on Saturdays.
For three months, letters were all we had. We got good at writing them, learning to say what mattered and read between the lines of what the other was really feeling.
You can compromise on everything, but do not compromise on someone loving you.
DAY 5 — “THE DOCTOR WHO COLLAPSED ON DUTY”
DEAR NIGERIANS,
Doctors are human too!
* Many battle burnout, anxiety, and hopelessness, yet still show up
* Some don’t even live to tell their stories
- All we ask is a system that lets us live while we heal others
- We are not heroes without limits , we are humans in white coats
Say it loud: Doctors deserve dignity.
#HumansInWhiteCoats | #OperationTICS | #NARDStrike2025
NARD Media Team
MENSTRUAL PAIN: ARE MOOD SWINGS REAL DURING MENSTRUATION?
IS MENSTRUAL PAIN AN EXCUSE FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR?
Walk with me.
When the Womb Weeps. A Letter to Aderonke
Dear Aderonke,
You are right, menstrual pain is real. Very real. Sometimes it feels like a chain saw cutting throiugh the skin. Sometimes it is a dull ache that sits in the belly like betrayal.
Like I'll always say, Menstruation is the weeping of a disappointed uterus, mourning the baby that did not come that month.
The womb contracts. The blood flows. And the pain becomes the language of the body’s grief.
And you are right again,sometimes this pain is not just monthly sadness. Sometimes it is endometriosis. Sometimes fibroids. Sometimes adenomyosis. Invisible wars fought by women whose smiles do not tell their stories.
And yes, this conversation must not be left for women alone. It should be whispered in classrooms and spoken loudly in clinics, so that boys grow into men who do not flinch when women say pain. So that understanding can stand beside empathy.
Because pain changes things, it dulls joy, sharpens tempers, and sometimes makes silence safer than speech. Hormones rise and fall like tides, pulling emotions with them, and sometimes a woman needs space.
But, my dear Aderonke, pain, no matter how deep is never a license for cruelty. Menstrual pain does not justify meanness. It doesn't equate bad behaviour.
It does not excuse unkindness. It should not strip us of grace.
I have seen women curled up on hospital beds, trembling, sweating, whispering prayers between spasms. I have held their hands and watched their tears fall not only from pain but from exhaustion.
And when I say your pain is valid, I say it with the weight of their tears and the echo of their sighs.
Yet even in pain, I have seen dignity. I have seen women choose restraint when rage would be easier. I have seen them call in sick from work rather than lash out in anger. They know pain, but they also know grace.
So when someone says, 'Menstrual pain is not an excuse for bad behaviour', perhaps they are not denying your pain, perhaps they are pleading for balance.
And balance, my dear, is everything. Because there is help.
Real, medical help. A gynaecologist can listen. A scan can reveal what eyes cannot see.
A laparoscopy can uncover what silence has hidden.
There are treatments. There is relief. There is hope.
So, dear Aderonke, continue to speak. Speak about pain, and about the women who endure it.
Speak about wombs that bleed and hearts that keep loving anyway. But speak with grace.
Let truth be firm, and spirit gentle.
Because women’s pain is best understood by women, but women’s dignity must be defended by us all.
As the resident Drs goes on strike let it be clear to us all that this fight is for the soul and heart of the entire Nigerian health sector. Is unfortunate that throughout the period of countdown I did not come across a single non Dr account talk about the strike and the demands of the resident Drs. When the strike kick off I indulge all that care to be aggressive with any individual or groups of individuals drying to say anything negative about the strike action.
A Teaching Hospital is the common man's go-to place for getting the right evaluation and treatment at the cheapest cost.
The engine of any Teaching Hospital are Resident Doctors, and they are going on strike in 5 days because of poor pay and working conditions.
It's deadly.
Permit me to make a tangential point. Prescription sheet shortage is not an isolated phenomenon. It is the result of a system that can't respond to all the (printing) needs of a hospital.
From lab forms to consult forms, clinical sheets etc. This is thousands of different papers daily in a big hospital. A system must exist to deliver all this consistently. This would involve personnel in printing and stores. Systems in logistics, requisition, inventory etc.
These shortages are replicated across other areas like oxygen, scans, drugs and more. This is Nigeria's problem, a severe inability to organize public systems to deliver good services to citizens. Private facilities deliver this service well most of the time. Certain public facilities with dedicated leaders also do so it's not impossible.
Ultimately this is an accountability problem that resolves to a political problem. If systems are poor, the CMD should be sacked. The CMD is however there because (s)he aligns politically with the powers that be. The political powers that be are there because they buy the elections and own the courts. So they just need to compensate key powerful people and suddenly the need for accountability to the end user or citizen is gone.
To get prescription papers reliably in all our public hospitals, we need to solve our political problems and make politicians responsive to the true needs of the larger populace. The political decisions we make affect whether or not the hospital in our area has prescription paper and other important consumables.
Play politics wisely! Poor systems no dey look face!
Same training. Same duties. Same risks.
But different pay?
We demands the harmonization of doctors’ salaries across all health institutions to ensure fairness and discourage brain drain.
Resident doctors across Nigeria continue to face unsafe working conditions — including prolonged call hours that exceed 24 hours without rest or compensation.
These conditions endanger both doctors and patients.
We call on the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to urgently implement a safe call duty schedule in line with international best practices, to protect the wellbeing of healthcare workers.
#NARD
Tu Youyou became the first mainland Chinese scientist to be awarded a #NobelPrize in a scientific field - for discovering artemisinin, a malaria cure that’s saved millions. Today we reveal the 2025 medicine laureate. Stay tuned.
I still remember being a house officer.
It was our first day in Paediatrics at Massey, and during orientation, a senior medical officer was speaking to us.
I asked a question (a simple, respectful question) and maybe she didn’t like that I had the audacity to speak up.
@SeunBello_ Lol was randomly reading the tweet and said to myself, i have a friend that did exactly this, lo and behold it was your tweet i was reading 😂😂
Well done Bello
This man is one of the finest brains in the medical profession in Nigeria. It breaks my heart that I have to put out this post.
An anesthetist is someone who is a consultant- that means they are a top medical expert in their medical field. To be a consultant you need at least 12 years of medical training.
He has prostate cancer and we have to crowdfund to save his life. Just see the kind of destruction that Nigeria does to those who are its best brains.
When you see me cry, lament and scream about the nigerian government and the lunatics in it, it is stories like this that cause it.
This is really heartbreaking.
Please kindly donate. Pls kindly retweet.