The Coalition of parents of foreign trained medical doctors in Nigeria has threatened to institute legal action against Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN).
The parents, at a press briefing in Kano on Wednesday, said the action becomes necessary with the way they accused MDCN of extorting their wards with illegal examinations without granting them operating license.
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Speaking on behalf of the parents, the Chairman of the coalition, Professor Lukman I. Diso, alleged that no law says the students must be assessed again upon their resumption before they could be given licenses to operate in the country.
Diso said, “This coalition was formed to address serial persistent breaches of law and inconsistent injustice of MDCN, which is the regulatory body for medical and dental and dental practices in Nigeria.
“Our main issues are that the council is mandating our children to register or undergo internship, before getting licence, which is against the council’s own guidelines.
“It has continued to subject doctors to unnecessary assessment exams at high cost, before registration/internship. Same also applies to their enrolment into the mandatory National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.
“As the result of the council’s arbitrariness, each doctor has to pay a total of N135,000 as registration fees. Before the assessment exams, all of them have to register for attachment with hospitals for four months and pay a fee ranging between N150,000 and N200,000. In between, they are advised to pay another tutorial fee ranging from N50,000 to N100,000.
“Yet, with this situation, the MDCN blames the doctors for high rate of failure, which no one can verify. They want the situation to continue because it provides them with more cash cows that will come back for resists endlessly. One may imagine someone taking the exams nine times,” Professor Diso added.
The parents also accused the MDCN Registrar’s recent utterances which imply the foreign schools as substandard as capable of engendering diplomatic misunderstanding between Nigeria and the countries.
Daily Trust reported that out of the 826 medical and dental graduates that sat for the November 2021 examination, only 357 of them passed, according to MDCN.
However, MDCN Registrar, Dr Tajudeen Sanusi, has recently told Daily Trust that the council has a curriculum and syllabus, and is contained in the Red Book, contrary to what the foreign-trained medical graduates said.
He also said that the said money paid by the foreign graduates go to the hospitals they served, and not the council.
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