Tuesday April 07, 2026

The man who ended the last strike. The man who had to start this one.

Less than a year ago, Dr. Shuaibu Ibrahim was on the other side of this.

He was the NARD Secretary-General who signed the communiqué suspending the 2025 nationwide doctors' strike. The agreement had been reached. The government had committed to the Professional Allowance Table. The doctors went back to work. Ibrahim signed the end of a 29-day walkout and told his members the fight had produced something.

He was right. It had produced a signed agreement.

What he couldn't have known then, or maybe what he suspected but trusted against, was how long that agreement would hold. The implementation kept moving. January became February. Then April arrived and the Federal Ministry of Finance announced the PAT would be scrapped.

On Saturday, April 4, Ibrahim convened an Extraordinary National Executive Council meeting, held virtually. The decision that came out of it was a "total industrial and comprehensive strike" beginning April 7.

He had to sign two communiqués. One ending the last strike. One starting this one. Both carry his name. Neither one is the wrong thing to have signed, given the circumstances of each. That's the thing about being the person who represents a group that keeps running into the same wall. You make agreements in good faith. You hold your members to those agreements. And then when the other side dissolves the agreement, you become the person who has to explain why they're walking out again.

The question Ibrahim cannot answer publicly, but that every NARD member is already running, is this. If this agreement goes the same way as the last one, what does the one after this look like?

That's the thing about trust with the Nigerian government's approach to labour commitments in healthcare. You don't just sign an agreement. You sign it knowing that the enforcement mechanism depends entirely on the government choosing to honour it. And when it doesn't, you sign another communiqué. And the cycle continues.

Dr. Shuaibu Ibrahim is not a villain in this story. He's not quite a hero either. He's the person the system put in the position of having to trust it twice.