Secrets Reporters
In a brazen display of executive cruelty that has sent shockwaves through Nigeria’s beleaguered health sector, a leaked memo from the Federal Ministry of Health & Social Welfare obtained by SecretsReporters reveals that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ordered the immediate stoppage of salaries for striking health workers.
The directive, anchored on the controversial “No-Work, No-Pay” policy, was issued even as the President reportedly jets abroad for medical attention, a move critics say is dripping in hypocrisy and double standards.
The memo, dated 8th January 2026, instructs all Chief Medical Directors and Medical Directors across the federation to enforce strict cessation of pay for members of the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) and Assembly of Healthcare Professionals who have downed tools in pursuit of better working conditions and funding for the nation’s ailing health system. The terse government communique leaves no room for negotiation, even as vital services teeter on the brink of collapse.
For millions of Nigerians, the timing could not be more ironic. While the President’s order clobbers the earnings of doctors, nurses, midwives, and other frontline workers, many of whom have not seen a commensurate raise in years, Tinubu is said to be abroad, seeking medical care in foreign hospitals. Critics have long accused the commander-in-chief of preferring medical facilities in Europe over Nigeria’s woefully underfunded institutions, a pattern smacking of disdain for the very health system his government vowed to upgrade.
During the last two years, Tinubu has racked up a litany of foreign trips, clocking hundreds of days overseas. Although some of these have been framed as diplomatic or state visits, scores of Nigerians and political rivals alike have alleged that several were medical in nature, especially visits to France and the UK, destinations repeatedly associated with elite medical tourism.
Historians of governance note that this culture of seeking healthcare abroad is nothing new among Nigeria’s political elite. Tinubu himself reportedly spent 90 days in the United Kingdom in 2021 following a knee surgery, a sojourn that fueled public debate long before he assumed the presidency.
Yet, underneath the polished rhetoric of policy and progress, many Nigerians are left to grapple with a bitter truth: while ordinary citizens and health workers struggle to breathe life into flimsy local hospitals, those at the helm routinely hop on private jets in pursuit of treatment they say is unavailable at home. The foreign trips by Nigeria’s leaders, critics argue, have undermined any confidence in local health infrastructure, creating an inferiority complex that feeds perpetual medical exile.
The reaction to the “No-Work, No-Pay” directive has been swift and blistering. Healthcare professionals branded the policy “callous” and “tone-deaf,” pointing out that years of neglect have driven many doctors and nurses out of the system, leaving skeletal staff to carry an impossible load. They argue that penalising them for striking, when the government has failed to invest in adequate facilities, drugs, and manpower, is adding insult to injury.
Analysts warn that this crisis is more than industrial unrest, it is a symptom of governance decayed by contradiction: policies that punish the backbone of public health, and personal choices that signal a lack of faith in the very system the government claims to champion.