Monday 12 October 2020

UGONSA TASKS NEW PERM SEC FMOI TO ADDRESS SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE METED ON NURSES BY THE MINISTRY

 

In a congratulatory letter Ref No.UG/NAT/20/PS/FMOI/01 dated October 12, 2020, the University Graduates of Nursing Science Association (UGONSA) had tasked the new Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Interior (FMOI) to address the age-long systemic injustice meted on nurses in terms of Placement, promotion and career progression by the Ministry. The texts of the letter are as posted below:





Dr Shuaib Muhammad Belgore,

The Permanent Secretary,
Federal Ministry of Interior (FMOI),
Block F, Old Federal Secretariat, 
Area 1, P.M.B. 7007, Garki, Abuja.

Sir,

NURSES CONGRATULATE YOU ON YOUR DESERVED APPOINTMENT AS THE PERMANENT SECRETARY FEDERAL MINISTRY OF INTERIOR AND PASSIONATELY IMPLORE YOU TO URGENTLY INTERVENE TO END THE PERENNIAL INJUSTICES NURSES SUFFER IN THE MINISTRY

We are delighted to extend our warm Nightingalic congratulations to you over your recent appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, to serve the country in another great capacity as the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Interior (FMOI). It was the special vigour and hard work you elaborated in the past in other realms of service to the country that paved way for your elevation to this new post to help the country solve its internal challenges that are growing in complexity at this auspicious moment in our national life. We give all glory to God for this positive development and wish you every success in your new assignment.

2.      However, we wish to draw your esteemed attention to perennial injustice nurses have suffered in the Ministry of Interior for your urgent intervention.

3.      We make haste to call your esteemed attention to this injustice because of the inclination that neither you nor President Muhammadu Buhari (who appointed you to this post) condones or adulates injustice and marginalization.

4.      As at date, the FMOI is the only Federal Ministry that is yet to implement extant circulars with regard to placement, promotion and career progression of nurses. We have approached the FMOI and the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board (CDCFIB) on several occasions to right the wrongs yet no reprieve in sight. The passivity of the FMOI towards doing the rightful and lawful thing for the nursing profession was so frustrating that we have to approach the Federal Ministry of Health (our mother ministry) for intervention. Despite the FMOH reaching out to the FMOI requesting that the FMOI implement the extant circulars for nurses vide its letter Ref No. C.6093/12/74 dated 26th August, 2020 (herewith marked and attached as Annexure A) we are yet to hear from the FMOI or the CDCFIB or see anything from their stable.

5.      To enable you comprehensively understand and appreciate the subject matter, we are going to summarize the problem and then chronicle our historic tortuous past efforts at getting the FMOI, the CDCFIB and the services under them to obey the law of the very Federal Government they serve vis-à-vis implementation of the lawful extant circulars on placement, promotion and career progression of nurses. We therefore appeal to you to kindly find time to read through this letter and its entire annexures.

6.      The crux of the matter is that the FMOI, through its parastatals [the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board (CDCFIB)], inexplicably singled out Registered Nurses (RN) with Bachelor of Nursing Science (BNSc) degree as the only university graduates of the core healthcare disciplines to be placed under the inspectorate cadre whereas the university graduates of other core healthcare disciplines are placed on the superintendent cadre. This has resulted in an uncanny situation whereby candidates not possessing a minimum of first degree in nursing as required by law are heading nursing units (the equivalent of directorate cadre in the Civil Service) despite that the eligibility for attaining such level is sine qua non of possession of a minimum of first degree in nursing as nursing is a profession of its own (sui generis) allied to no other profession and with no other profession allied to it.

7.      In the year 2018, when we noticed the ugly occurrence in an advert for recruitment made by the CDCFIB for recruitment into the Prisons Service (now Correctional Service) we initially thought it was a mistake, possibly made out of lack of adequate information on the extant placement of RN with BNSc degree in the Federation’s Services by those at the helms of affair in the board (CDCFIB).

8.      In the said advert (made vide Daily Trust Newspaper of Monday 30 April, 2018)  the position for all Registered Nurses (RN), including RN with BNSc degree, was listed in the inspectorate cadre as Inspector of Prison (IP) Nursing, CONHESS 06  whereas the University Graduates of other core healthcare disciplines such as Medicine and Pharmacy were listed in the superintendent cadre as Superintendent of Prison (SP) Medical/ veterinary, CONMESS 02  (respectively for medical and veterinary Doctors) and as Deputy Superintendent of Prison (DSP) Pharmacy, CONHESS 09 (for Pharmacists) [Please kindly refer Annexure B for the said Correctional Service job Advert].

9.      Giving them the benefit of doubt that it was not intentionally done, we humbly approached the FMOI and the CDCFIB {vide our letter Ref No. UGONSA/018/FMOI/01 dated 18th May, 2018} and the Nigerian Correctional Service (then Nigerian Prisons Service) {vide our letter Ref No. UGONSA/NAT/19/CG/NPS/01 dated 4th March, 2019} with detailed explanation of the extant placement of RN with BNSc degree in the Federation’s services praying for correction of the mistake of not listing RN with BNSc degree on the Superintendent cadre as was done for the University Graduates of other core healthcare professions.

10.  The Nigerian Correctional Service in her response to our letter {vide Ref No. NPS 114/S.33/1/86 dated 25th June, 2019} acknowledged that our demand was genuine but averred that it has forwarded our complaint, for the necessary action, to the CDCFIB on whose purview it lies to make the correction. [Please kindly refer to the Nigerian Correctional Service’s response hereby attached as Annexure C].

11.  As we awaited the correction from the FMOI, having written them a reminder {vide our letter Ref No.UG/NAT/19/ FMOI/01 dated 4th March, 2019}, came the unequivocal confirmation that the earlier action of the CDCFIB [whereby all Registered Nurses (RN), including RN with BNSc degree, were listed in the inspectorate cadre in the Nigerian Correctional Service job advert], was not a mistake but a deliberate plot not to obey the extant law as pertains to placement of nurses with degree in nursing in the Services of the Federation.

12.  This is because, in August 2019, the CDCFIB made another advert (this time for recruitment into the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, online via their website https://cdfipb.careers/jobs/civil-defence) in which [despite the unambiguous clarifications we have made to them] they yet further listed all Registered Nurses (RN), including the University Graduates of Nursing Science (.i.e RN with BNSc degree), under the inspectorate cadre whereas the University Graduates of other core healthcare disciplines equally advertised were listed in the superintendent cadre.

13.  For example, in the advert Medical Doctors, Dentist and Optometrist (who are all University Graduates like the RN with BNSc degree) were listed in the Category A [.i.e. the superintendent cadre] as Superintendent Corps (SC) Medical Doctors/ Dentist/ Optometrists, CONMESS 02 respectively whereas their counterparts in nursing [the University Graduates of Nursing Science, i.e. RN with BNSc) were listed in the Category B (.i.e. the inspectorate cadre) as Inspector of Corps (IC) CONHESS 07. [Please kindly refer Annexure D for the NSCDC job advert].

14.  Not deterred by the confirmed deliberate action of wanton marginalization and debasement of our dear nursing profession, we once more respectfully approached the CDCFIB {vide our letter Ref No. UG/NAT/19/CG/ CDFIBP /02 dated 19th August, 2019} with all the extant circulars requesting them to obey the extant law and be fair to the graduate nurses by placing them on the same superintendent cadre where they placed the university graduates of other core healthcare disciplines.

15.  To ensure that the matter was not again swept under the carpet we reported it to the current Minister of Interior vide our letter to him shortly after his inauguration {Ref No. UG/NAT/19/FMOI/02 dated 30th September, 2019}.

16.   Despite all the well-documented efforts we have made to make the CDCFIB [and the Federal Ministry of Interior (FMOI) that oversees it] to do the rightful and lawful thing, it is becoming clearer that there is an incomprehensible inclination to breaking the law than obeying it for inexplicable reasons other than that the people involved are nurses, who in the thinking or out of primordial sentiments of some top wigs in the FMOI & CDCFIB should be marginalized, traumatized, debased and treated as if they are second class citizens of this great country because of their professional leaning.

17.  This is especially as the most recent advert made by the CDCFIB on March 13th, 2020 for recruitment into the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) via the NIS website, https://immigration.gov.ng/advertisement-for-vacancies/, again listed the University Graduates of other core healthcare professions on the superintendent cadre except the university Graduates of Nursing Science [please kindly refer Annexure E for the most recent CDCFIB advert for recruitment into NIS made this year, 2020].

18.  With the repetition of such aberrant and provocative act of willfully portraying the nursing degree as subservient to other degrees in this year’s advert for employment into the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), despite having been adequately informed about the right thing, we were compelled to seek the intervention of the Federal Ministry of Health, FMOH, (our mother Ministry) to speak truth to the FMOI and CDCFIB, hence the FMOH’s memo to the FMOI (attached herewith as Annexure A).

19.  It is incontrovertible that whatever qualified the University Graduates of other core healthcare professions to ply the superintendent cadre also qualifies their counterparts in nursing to ply the same cadre. If not so, we would appreciate that the CDCFIB and the FMOI furnish us with information on what qualified the university degree of other core healthcare professions to ply the superintendent cadre that does not qualify the university degree of nursing to ply the same cadre.

20.   It is pertinent to point out that the Industrial Arbitration Panel (IAP) Award of the year 1981 (hereby attached as Annexure L) was unequivocal in its declaration that Nursing is a profession Sui Generis and that both professions of Nursing and Pharmacy are on parity in Nigeria as is the case in Great Britain. Corollary, the fact that the admission requirements & course duration for both Nursing and Pharmacy for the first degree in the university are similar, confers that the first degrees of both professions [i.e. Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) and the Bachelor of Nursing Science (BNSc)] shall be accorded similar measure in the schemes of things. 

21.  For the eligibility of heading a nursing unit in the CDCFIB services (akin to a Director of Nursing heading the Nursing Unit in the mainstream Civil Service), the Nursing & Midwifery Council of Nigeria, NMCN, (the statutory regulatory body for the nursing in Nigeria), the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF) had astutely maintained that nursing a unique profession on and of its own globally (sui generis) allied to no other profession and with no other profession allied to it and have variously averred vide many extant circulars and memos that whoever MUST ply the directorate cadre of Nursing vis-à-vis head a nursing unit MUST possess a minimum of first degree in nursing (.i.e BNSc/B.Sc Nursing) [Kindly refer the documents marked and attached as Annexure F, G, H, I, J & K].

22.  It defies comprehension how the FMOI which ordinarily should be the avatar of rule of law turned out to be the only Ministry running afoul of the law as it concerns placement, promotion and career progression of nurses. Changing this ugly narrative in your tenure as the Permanent Secretary, FMOI, will be an indelible landmark the nursing profession shall never cease to reference. 

23.  As we gleefully welcome and celebrate your appointment as the Permanent Secretary, FMOI, we wish to emphasize that the hope of our deeply traumatized members now lie on your donning a patriotic fatherly garb to do justice to all Nigerians irrespective of professional or any other leaning and thus humbly request that you make haste to salvage the nursing profession from the age-long unwarranted brutality, debasement and marginalization suffered in the hand of the FMOI and the CDCFIB, which our members now find extremely difficult to endure any longer.

PRAYER

We most fervently pray that you use your God-given new position as the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Interior (FMOI) to prevail on the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board (CDCFIB) to do the rightful and lawful thing for the nursing profession vide deployment of due process in the placement, remuneration, and career progression of nurses under its services, by seeing that it

     1.  employs the university graduates of nursing (.i.e. RN possessing B.N.Sc/B.Sc.Nursing degree) on the superintendent cadre as is done for the university graduates of other core healthcare disciplines.

      2.  corrects the career pathway of the graduate nurses already employed in the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services from the inspectorate to the superintendent cadre.

     3.   implement Grade Level 09 as the entry point for Registered Nurses (RN) possessing B.N.Sc/B.Sc.Nursing degree in line with the provision of the  extant circulars of the Nigerian Government (see Annexure A page 3 & 4).

       4.  upgrade to Grade Level 09 the existing Nurse Officers possessing B.N.Sc/B.Sc.Nursing degree who were employed before 8th September, 2016  but are still below the new base of Grade Level 09 effective from 8th September, 2016 (being the date of release of the circular REF No. HCSF/EIR/CND/S.100/ST/97 by the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation) as prescribed by the Civil Service circular, Ref No. B63279/S.7/II/T/273 dated 24th April, 2002 (See Annexure A page 5).

     5
. 
upgrade all graduate nurses (i.e. RN with B.N.Sc/B.Sc.Nursing degree) who were wrongly employed below the new base of Grade Level 09 after 8th September, 2016 to Grade Level 09 effective from the date of their employment as prescribed by the Civil Service circular, Ref No. B63279/S.7/II/T/273 dated 24th April, 2002 (See Annexure A page 5).

       6.  limits the headship of nursing unit to only candidates possessing a minimum of first degree in nursing as prescribed by law and done for other core healthcare professions such as Medicine, Pharmacy, and Medical Laboratory Science.

Please, accept our heartfelt Congratulations!

                                                                           Signed:

 

         CHIEF (HON.) S.E.O. EGWUENU                                          NURSE P.O. ETENG

            National President                                                                Ag.National Secretary

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