Opinion

Primary Health Workers’ Strike: People React

Published

11 years ago

November 17, 2014

Prince Ibinabo Lazarus – Primary Health Worker
We initially demanded the formation of Primary Health Care Management Board because of unfair treatment meted on Primary Health workers by local government councils in terms of salaries and other entitlements due us.
Now that the National Assembly is trying to make local governments autonomous, let’s hope the councils can manage the health workers and health facilities since all money payable to the board must come to an end.
So, our demands have been made known to the state government which includes the implementation of the consolidated salary structure; promotion of senior staff, implementation of last promotion exercise, among others.
And the workers have resolved that we are not going back to work until all our demands are met. Health workers in local governments should be treated like their counterparts in the state. A situation where there is disparities in the salaries of health workers of the same level who are working in the same facility, simply because one is employed by the state government and the other by the local government is unacceptable.
It is my sincere wish that the state government meets our demands so that we can go back to work so as to avoid the devastating effects the strike might have on the state. Already, there is collapse of the free medical system and increased morbidity rate. I want to advice mothers not to go for vaccination at the Primary Healthcare centres because the vaccines are no longer potent.
We are appealing to well meaning citizens of the state to persuade government to grant us our demands. We are merely asking for our rights. And as far as I am concerned, Primary Health Care Service deliveries have collapsed in the state. Clients and beneficiaries should seek for service deliveries in the secondary and tertiary sectors.

Mr Robert Ibiso – Health worker.
Government knows the conditions we gave. If the conditions are met, we have no excuse whatsoever not to go back to work. We are willing to serve the populace at any time but government should give us our due right and treat us the way we deserve. I know too well that the incumbent governor of Rivers State may not do much about the on-going strike.
For now people are still benefiting from some of our health care service deliveries despite the industrial action. But you cannot compare what is going on there with the services we provide. We were trained for this job. We were trained to carry out some services in our health facilities in order to contain the spread of contagious diseases like cholera, measles and others. Today, go to Pott Johnson, Church Hill and other health centres and you will discover that immunisation and other health service deliveries are bequeathed to our clients even though we are on strike. You can imagine the caliber of quacks used for this.
Perhaps, this is the reason government is dilly-dallying over the implementation of our rightful requests. But this might lead to a big health problem in the state if not handled urgently.
Mrs Veronica – Nurse
The health workers are demanding their right on the grounds that they have not been promoted for the past eight years without a cogent reason. There has been no employment of new technical staff to replace those who have left the service by retirement, resignation or death. Workers are not being paid their due salaries.
Nevertheless, there seems to be confusion among the health workers currently. There are those who feel oppressed by the local government council, for not effecting their demands but at the same time prefer to remain with the local government areas after the Primary Health Care Management Board was mandated to deduct the money from source and take over the payment of their salaries and other demands.
Another set of the health workers is comfortable with the arrangement by which the Primary Health Care Board, takes over the payment of their wages and allowances, though they have other demands.
The beneficiaries of the primary health care service deliveries should braze up for harder days ahead because I don’t see this tussle ending soon. The poor masses are beginning to feel the impact of the strike because immunisation rate had dropped in the state. More people are dying.
I advise that the public should appeal to the government to implement the demands of the striking workers so that they can go back to work. Their services are very essential especially to those in the rural areas who cannot assess secondary and tertiary health institutions and those who cannot afford private hospitals.
However, I will also tell the public to seek for healthcare services from the private hospitals or abroad (for those that can afford it) because the level of our health care systems is now zero.

Grace Moses – Applicant
The industrial Action embarked upon by Primary Health Workers is unfortunate and detrimental. They are punishing the poor masses. The situation could be likened to where two elephants are fighting and the grasses are suffering.
Go to some health centers in the state and see how people are suffering. Antenatal and other bills have been increased unprecedentedly. Mothers are made to pay for things and services they ought not to pay for. Indeed the strike is causing a great hardship for everyone in our state especially pregnant women, mothers and their babies.
My sister-in-law is pregnant. She has not been going for antenatal care because the workers are not there to attend to them. For some times now, she has been having some pains, but she keeps enduring the pain at home since she can’t not afford health care services in the private sector and that can force her to seek for health care services from traditional birth attendances though she detests it.
So, government should please do something about this strike before people begin to die unnecessarily.
Annonymous – Medical Doctor
The issue is that politicians do not value the services of health workers. Every administration that comes on board treats health workers in the local government as if they are no human beings. Look at my office, I am a medical doctor and a director in the civil service, can you compare this office with that of another director in another department in this local government or even in the state? The neglect and marginalisation is too much and I don’t know why. Health workers are the last to receive their salaries and allowances. Meanwhile the council chairmen are busy embezzling this money. For more than eight years, there has not been employment in the primary health sector yet people have retired, some have died, many have resigned. We are grossly understaff. Yet wehen the workers labour to serve the public, they will not be paid, nor will they be promoted along with other workers in the local government.
As a director you cannot sanction an erring staff under you because you have no control over her salaries and allowances. The number of health workers is over bloated by the councils who make money from the large number of ghost workers.
That is why NULGE and a few health workers who are benefitting from the corrupt system are fighting against the establishment of the Primary Health Management Board. They are jittery that with the board paying workers’ salaries and allowances they will no longer make their millions. The board is there to strengthen the Primary Health Sector in State, cater for the welfare of the health workers and at the same time make sure that the workers sit up and carry out their duties as they should and some enemies of progress are kicking against it. The State government has built over a hundred health centres in different parts of the state. Tell me how can the local governments manage these health institutions? The state government in its wisdom, set up the Primary Health Management Board to take charge of these health centres to make sure that the health centres are alive and active even when Amaechi’s tenure elapses.
So, for me, government should not go back on the promise of transferring health workers salaries from the local government councils to the Primary Healthcare Management Board. It is in the best interest of the generality of the workers and the public.
I will also urge government to attend to other demands of the genuine striking workers vis-à-vis the payment of CONHESS arrears from March 2011 to June 2014; payment of HAPPS arrears; payment of 38 months unified salary structure arrears for health workers in the 23 local government areas; implementation of the last senior staff promotion among others.
When this is done, the real health workers will go back to work and things will normalise.

Mr Micheal Nnadi- Student
For me I am not feeling the impact of the strike, maybe because I don’t patronize the primary health care services or any government hospital at all. I prefer private clinics, though they are expensive, they give you quality service.
However, I don’t buy this idea of workers down tooling every now and then. Our country is becoming a country of daily strike actions and I don’t think it is good for the image of the country. The health workers should think of other ways of ironing out their differences with the government instead of punishing the poor patients. They should stop being selfish and think of the interest of those who depend on their services.
On the other hand, those in authority should try and be more responsible and reasonable. They should take workers welfare as their priority. How much are these workers even asking for? Is it half of the amount our leaders spend on politics and other frivolous ventures. I am quite sure that if our leaders do not steal public fund, there will be enough money for all sectors of the economy.
So government and the striking workers should settle their differences and stop making life more miserable for the poor.

Opinion

Agony In Ivory Tower

Published

1 day ago

March 9, 2026

The Tide

Quote: A university that tolerates missing scripts, result manipulation and ‘sorting’ is not merely failing students—it is quietly destroying the moral foundation of education itself.”

The sad cases of missing scripts, compulsory Sorting, inputting of wrong results and other obnoxious practices in some public universities, leave much to be desired. One cannot imagine how a student will be compelled to suffer consequences of the flagrant negligence of a Head of Department, a lecturer, Department staff or an ICT staff.Many academic and non academic staff in several public universities seem to be performing far below standard, thus unproductive to the university system. The unacceptable cases of sorting, missing scripts, missing results, inputting of wrong grades to students, should not be mentioned in a university, not even in any academic community. This is because people who are employed to work in various positions should have cognate work experience and unquestionable competence. They should not be seen as certificate welding illiterates but people who have been proven to be worthy in learning and character, diligent and competent to carry out assigned responsibilities with minimal or no supervision.

The university as a citadel of learning should boast of men of integrity, people who are repositories of applied knowledge and competence to drive the much desired holistic development in a nation that functions on quality teaching and learning. A situation where a student having gone through the crucibles of learning and written a prescribed semester examination or class-based evaluation test, is told that his or her script is missing or that he or she did not participate in that academic exercise, or must sort to pass, is an unpardonable error and a height of callousness. In fact some lecturers and staff of Departments are using the seeming systemic defect (which is their architecture) as an opportunity to extort students. Sometimes it is discovered much to students chagrin that the supposed missing script was later discovered when a ransom was paid.

Since a lecturer, or Head of Department has in their disposal both Yam and the knife and determines who takes what (if they wish to give without strings), students have no alternative but to submit to their importunate demands in order to graduate at record time.Such practices should be unheard of in an institution that should be a vanguard of moral and ethical values and conduct. What people learn in school constitute their behavioural patterns in the society. Where the school as an agency of socialisation cannot drive positive change first in its immediate environment, then the objective of education as a bedrock for the development of society, is inevitably compromised and counter-productive. The German Reformer, Dr. Martins Luther was quoted as saying, “I advise parents not to put their wards or children in any school where the Bible is not being used as a rule of life because such institutions will unnecessarily be corrupt”.

Gleaning from Luther’s sentiment one can deduce that the lack of respect and regard for values as well as the absence of the fear of God is the greatest undoing of most public schools. Another major challenge is that lack of Information, Communication and Technology literacy or compliance on the part of some lecturers and heads of department, may have informed the decision to give students’ scripts to secretaries to compile and input students results thereby making the secretaries the determinants of students’ fate. It is not saying a new thing that some of the secretaries in the process of compiling results have inputted wrong results, omitted names or down graded some students or given unmerited grades to others.Society today is ICT-driven and ICT-literacy enhances efficiency, speed and a reasonable degree of accuracy if the person behind the computer is level headed, articulate, competent, alive to responsibilities and is aware that negligence on his or her part is not only tantamount to a disservice to the university but to the students who may not graduate at record time because of his or her (computer operator’s) gross ineptitude or carelessness.

The ICT era makes the carrying of hard copy of results obsolete as lecturers through the Heads of Department can log on to the central server of the Exams and Records (if any) or ICT unit and input students’ results directly. By so doing the incessant cases where result on spread sheet is different from the one published online, more often than not, caused by abject negligence, will be avoided. The process will also end the intermediary services of some staff in the universities’ Information, Communication and Technology Department which has become a money spinner-a lucrative source of income to many of them. In fact some ICT staff reserved the power to award grades to students depending on students’ degree of compliance to terms and conditions. They can dubiously make or unmake a student. The university community should be considered too lofty to have careless, negligent, immoral and academic or professionally deficient people as academic or non-academic staff.

The Governing Councils and Senates of universities should be proactive in addressing the menace of missing Script, inputting of wrong results and sorting. This is necessary to end the slogan “Education is scam” so the system can produce quality students who are truly found worthy in learning and in character by operators who exemplify diligence, moral and ethical values. The much-needed reform must begin within the institutions themselves, because the future of any society is shaped in its classrooms.

By: Igbiki Benibo

Opinion

Strength of Emotional Equality

Published

1 day ago

March 9, 2026

The Tide

Quote: “Love thrives not when one gives more, but when both give fully — not in competition, not in performance, but in partnership.”

In every healthy relationship, there exists an invisible balance. It is not measured in grand gestures, expensive gifts, or public displays of affection. It is measured in something quieter and far more significant: emotional equality. When couples stand on equal emotional grounds, love becomes less of a negotiation and more of a partnership. Emotional equality does not mean both individuals express love in identical ways. It does not require matching personalities or mirroring temperaments. Rather, it speaks to balance — a shared willingness to invest, to communicate, to be vulnerable, and to grow. It is the difference between two people walking side by side and one person constantly trying to catch up.

In many relationships, imbalance begins subtly. One partner initiates most conversations. One apologizes more frequently. One carries the emotional labor — remembering important dates, managing conflicts, sensing tension, and attempting reconciliation. Over time, this uneven distribution of emotional effort breeds exhaustion. The partner who gives more begins to feel unseen. The one who gives less may grow comfortable in emotional passivity. Love, in such a space, starts to tilt — slowly at first, then significantly. Resentment can creep in quietly, disguising itself as patience. Silence may replace honest dialogue. What once felt effortless begins to feel heavy.

When couples stand on equal emotional grounds, responsibility is shared. Both people are accountable for the health of the relationship. If conflict arises, neither hides behind silence nor dominates through control. Instead, they engage. They listen. They speak honestly without weaponizing words. Equality creates safety — and safety strengthens intimacy. It allows both individuals to express needs without fear of ridicule or rejection. One of the most overlooked aspects of emotional equality is vulnerability. True connection requires courage. It demands that both partners risk being misunderstood. But when vulnerability is one-sided, it becomes exposure rather than intimacy. If one person consistently opens up while the other remains guarded, trust cannot fully deepen.

Equality ensures that emotional risks are mutual. Where one shares fears, the other shares too. Where one admits weakness, the other responds with openness rather than judgment. In such a space, authenticity flourishes. Another crucial element is validation. In emotionally balanced relationships, both partners feel heard. Their concerns are not dismissed as “overreactions.” Their feelings are not minimized or compared. When couples operate on equal emotional ground, they acknowledge each other’s experiences as legitimate. They may not always agree, but they always respect. Validation does not mean surrendering one’s viewpoint; it means recognizing that another’s emotional reality matters.

Equality also protects individuality. Contrary to popular belief, healthy love does not erase personal identity — it enhances it. When both partners are emotionally secure, they do not feel threatened by each other’s independence. Personal ambitions are encouraged, not resented. Friendships are respected, not restricted. Growth is celebrated, not feared. Standing on equal emotional grounds means neither person shrinks to accommodate the other. Instead, both expand, knowing the relationship is strong enough to hold their evolution. Power dynamics often expose emotional inequality. When one partner controls communication — appearing and disappearing unpredictably, withholding affection, or using silence as leverage — imbalance emerges.

Emotional dominance weakens intimacy. It creates anxiety instead of assurance. But when couples share emotional power, there is consistency. There is clarity. There is no need to decode affection because it is offered freely and intentionally. It is important to understand that equality does not imply perfection. Couples will still disagree. They will face stress, miscommunication, and moments of frustration. However, when emotional footing is equal, conflict does not threaten the foundation. Instead, it becomes an opportunity for understanding. Both partners approach challenges as teammates rather than opponents. They choose resolution over ego and repair over pride.

Time often reveals whether emotional equality truly exists. In the early stages of love, intensity can disguise imbalance. Enthusiasm feels mutual. Effort appears equal. But as routine settles in and novelty fades, the structure of the relationship becomes clearer. Who still initiates? Who still invests? Who still shows up consistently? Sustainable love requires sustained balance. It is built not merely on attraction, but on deliberate reciprocity. Standing on equal emotional grounds requires intentionality. It demands honest conversations about needs and expectations. It requires both partners to examine their habits — whether they withdraw during tension, avoid accountability, or rely on the other to carry the emotional weight. Emotional maturity is not about avoiding conflict; it is about handling it responsibly and returning, again and again, to shared ground.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of emotional equality is peace. There is no constant anxiety about where one stands. No guessing games about commitment. No fear that affection may suddenly disappear. Instead, there is stability. There is reassurance. There is mutual effort. In a world where relationships often blur the lines between attention and commitment, equality offers clarity. It reminds us that love should not feel like competition or performance. It should feel like partnership. When couples stand on equal emotional grounds, they build something resilient. They build trust that does not fracture easily. They build respect that does not depend on mood. They build a connection rooted not only in passion but in balance. And in that balance, love finds its strength — not in who gives more, but in how both give fully.

By: Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi

Opinion

NDDC: Time To Illuminate Homes

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

The Tide

Quote:“Twenty-five years on, the Niger Delta cannot celebrate illuminated streets while families sit in darkness. Development must begin inside the home — where children study, businesses grow, and lives are built — before it glows on the roadside.”

The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was established in 2000 with a clear and urgent mandate: to facilitate the rapid, even, and sustainable development of Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region. The creation of the Commission followed decades of agitation over environmental degradation, infrastructural neglect, and socio-economic marginalization in the region. Its core mandate included the development of roads, bridges, electricity, water supply, health facilities, education, housing, environmental remediation, and economic empowerment initiatives. At inception, expectations were high that the Commission would transform the Niger Delta into a model of regional development. Over the years, the NDDC has indeed implemented numerous projects across the nine Niger Delta states. Roads have been constructed and rehabilitated in several communities, easing transportation challenges.

Schools have been renovated, and new classroom blocks have been provided in underserved areas. Health centres have been built or upgraded, improving access to primary healthcare services. The Commission has also awarded scholarships to students, including foreign postgraduate scholarships, empowering thousands of youths academically.Skills acquisition and youth empowerment programmes have helped many young people gain vocational competencies.Through various interventions, the NDDC has contributed to job creation and local economic stimulation.Solar-powered street lighting projects have been widely implemented in urban and semi-urban communities. These streetlights have improved visibility at night and contributed to enhanced security in some areas. Markets, highways, and public spaces illuminated by solar lights have experienced extended business hours.

For these efforts, the Commission deserves acknowledgment and commendation. However, development must always align with foundational mandates and pressing grassroots realities. A growing concern among residents is that while streets are illuminated, many homes remain in darkness. Rural electrification and household power access remain inconsistent and inadequate across large parts of the region. In riverine and remote communities, families still rely on generators, kerosene lamps, or complete darkness after sunset. The irony of brightly lit streets juxtaposed with powerless homes cannot be ignored. Electricity at the household level directly impacts education, health, and small-scale enterprise. Students cannot effectively study at night without reliable indoor lighting.Families cannot preserve food or power essential appliances without stable electricity.

Micro and small businesses struggle to grow without dependable energy access. While street lighting enhances public aesthetics and security, it does not substitute for domestic electrification. The proverb “charity begins at home” is especially relevant in this context. True community development must first empower households before beautifying public spaces. The Commission’s original mandate emphasizes integrated and sustainable development, not isolated infrastructural gestures. Balanced development requires that energy interventions prioritize homes alongside streets. Solar technology presents a unique opportunity for decentralized household electrification in off-grid communities. Extending solar solutions to individual homes would have a transformative social impact. Home-based solar systems could power lights, fans, small appliances, and communication devices.

Such interventions would reduce poverty, improve living standards, and stimulate grassroots productivity. By broadening its energy focus, the Commission would better reflect the spirit of its founding legislation. This is not a call to abandon street lighting projects, which have their merits. Rather, it is an appeal for balance, inclusivity, and alignment with core developmental objectives. Strategic planning should ensure that rural electrification and household access form a central pillar of ongoing interventions. Community engagement and needs assessments can help determine priority areas for household solar deployment. Twenty-five years after its establishment, the NDDC stands at a reflective moment in its institutional journey. The people of the Niger Delta say: thank you for the efforts so far—but not very much—because true appreciation will come when development begins at home and radiates outward, not merely when streets shine while houses remain in darkness.

By: King Onunwor