Health Sector Industrial Labour Troubles in Nigeria: Implication for Leaders and Other Stakeholders

Abstract

Nigeria’s health sector has been challenged with frequent industrial labour troubles, commonly called strikes. Industrial labour disputes are the existence of incompatibility of goals, interests, and values of different persons or groups in an organization. Several causes have been identified for the strikes in Nigeria. This review focuses on the various causes of industrial troubles in Nigeria, and the consequences of the industrial action on the stakeholders. Causes were identified as: poor administration, incompetent leaders, the failure of government to keep the agreement that was signed with the unions, poor funding and poor infrastructure in the health sector, and supremacy challenge between doctors and other health workers were identified amongst other factors to be the cause of strikes in the Nigerian health sector. Unfortunately, patients were the greatest affected during these strikes, especially when the public health facilities were shut down and the patients were discharged to go home or moved to other private hospitals.