HEALTH services are almost non-existent due to the current indefinite strike action by the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU), emptying the health facilities of needed staff. The industrial action, which commenced on November 15, 2025, is crippling primary, secondary and tertiary health institutions, including federal medical centres and teaching hospitals.
The state councils of JOHESU were instructed by the national headquarters of the union to issue a 15-day strike notice to their respective state governments to join the industrial action in line with extant labour laws. Should this happen, the trade dispute would spare no part of the country and would worsen the health conditions of patients.
By the first week of December, the directive to state branches to join the strike may take effect if the relevant federal authorities do not step in now to end the industrial dispute. The immediate implication of the submergence of the entire public health system under the flood of industrial strike would be catastrophic indeed. There could be thousands of avoidable deaths, for instance, on account of the a strike being allowed to fester. out. And the financial toll on the country would be quite humongous.
The unions involved in the strike include the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria, Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals, the Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes and Associated Institutions and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions.
This coalition of unions represent various health workers, including nurses and midwives, medical laboratory scientists, and other personnel in public hospitals.
The main grievance of JOHESU is the the adjustment of the Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS) since 2014. The union argues that as at January 2, 2014, the federal government implemented for medical doctors a new salary structure without a corresponding review for other health workers. As lately as 2022, a committee report on the adjustment of CONHESS was submitted to the Presidential Committee on Salaries and Wages but no action was taken on it, according to the National Chairman, Comrade Kabiru Minjibir.
President Bola Tinubu inherited the issue on assumption of office in May 2023. Through his intervention, the strike that was on to press the demand was suspended on June 5, 2023. In a further move to pacify the union, JOHESU signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the federal government on October 29, 2024 at the end of a seven-day warning strike. Yet, contrary to expectations, no positive response had come from government, more than one year after the MOU was signed, leaning to the current indefinite strike.
The two elephants are fighting and the sick cannot access health services at hospitals, those on admission have been discharged and forced to seek help in expensive private health facilities. Lives are on the line. The paralysis of services at the federal hospitals and other health institutions should not be allowed to continue. Accordingly, President Tinubu and JOHESU executives must meet half way to effectively address the dispute.
