Blanket restrictions by IGP unfortunate – Dayo Faduyile
– Steve Ovirih.
A hard knock has been given to the decision of the Inspector General of Police concerning the blanket restriction of movement between the hours of 8pm to 6am . This blanket restriction, which was rescinded within 24 hours of its been pronounced has made Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) Lagos to order its members to engage in sit at home effective from Wednesday, the 20th of May until a document expressing the need for essential workers to be allowed to walk and work without any inhibitions is made available in black and white.
While backing this decision of Lagos NMA, the national President of NMA , Dr. Dayo Francis Faduyile, appearing on primetime on Channels TV, said it was unfortunate that in this decade the higher exchellon of the Nigerian security apparatchik can give a restriction order that will not consider the very sensitive nature of the essential services of the medical professionals.
While noting that the safety protocols of covid 19 request people to stay at home, such could not be said to affect the movement of Medical Doctors and nurses, noting that they carry out essential services for humanity, which requires that they must be on their feet every now and then . Faduyile said the rate at which Doctors and nurses, health workers generally are harrased at night at major police posts and military checkpoints leave much to be desired.
[” In Abuja, it is as bad as soldiers arresting ambulance that was ferrying a patient from one point to another.
” When you ask a medical doctor to show you his roaster on the way so he can move, it shows how deep we have sunk as a nation and how indifferent we have become to the sensitive and essential services of medical doctor, ” Dr. Dayo Faduyile emphasised.
He said he was in total support of the Lagos NMA sit at home order, noting that the medical professionals are not pushovers and must be accorded the appropriate honour of being medical life savers.
Faduyile said if doctors could be beaten up at checkpoints because they dared to answer calls to save lives, then those who gave the orders for medical professionals not to be categorised as essential workers should make the rescinding of such orders more effective by making it available not just by word of mouth or pronouncement but by providing such orders in black and white that the doctors and nurses can work with as evidence, to prevent untold embarrassment in the future.
