Nurses and midwives at the Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Oyo State, have given the hospital management 15 days to address long-standing complaints about their welfare and working conditions.
The workers, under the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), LAUTECH chapter, accused management of sidelining them whenever new benefits were introduced for health workers in the state.
Their position was made public in a statement signed in Ibadan by the unit chairman, Ojewumi Olutayo, and the unit secretary, Adedokun Foluwake.
According to the nurses, while colleagues in other state-owned hospitals have begun receiving the new national minimum wage, those at LAUTECH have been excluded.
They also cited delays in the payment of COVID-19 allowances and hazard allowances, saying the neglect had left workers struggling financially and weakened morale.
Their demands include immediate implementation of the new minimum wage from January 2025, payment of promotion arrears dating back to 2018, recruitment of more nurses to ease staff shortages, and renovation of nurses’ stations and restrooms.
“The situation is now unbearable. If the state government does not act before our ultimatum expires, we will have no choice but to go on strike,” the nurses warned.
They argued that the persistent exclusion of LAUTECH staff from state-wide welfare packages could only be corrected if the government directly handled their salary payments.
The association also warned that a strike would seriously disrupt healthcare services. As the only state-owned tertiary hospital, LAUTECH serves patients from Ogbomoso, Oyo, Iseyin, Okeho, Igbeti, Saki, Kisi, Otta, and even neighboring areas of Osun and Kwara States.
“The people who will suffer most are pregnant women, children, accident victims, and patients in need of emergency care,” the statement added.
The nurses appealed to Governor Seyi Makinde to step in personally, calling on his sense of fairness to resolve what they described as years of exclusion and neglect.
Their ultimatum highlights wider unrest in Nigeria’s health sector, where issues of poor wages, delayed allowances, and harsh working conditions remain common.
Although Oyo State has provided welfare packages for health workers in other facilities, LAUTECH staff say they have been left out too often.
With the hospital being the state’s main referral centre, any strike would cause widespread disruption, exposing deeper problems of underfunding, staff shortages, and the welfare crisis affecting frontline health workers.
