Mutfwang urges FG to stop student loan beneficiaries from leaving Nigeria

Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, has urged the Federal Government to establish a system that prevents students who receive training through the student loan scheme from leaving the country.

The Governor stated this on Monday night in Jos, when he hosted the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr.

According to the governor, the aim is to ensure that students who benefit from the student loan scheme remain in the country to contribute to its development, rather than seeking greener pastures abroad.

Mutfwang specifically expressed concern about the devastating effects of brain drain on the healthcare system in Nigeria.

He noted that the mass exodus of highly trained medical professionals, such as doctors, nurses, and specialists, has resulted in a severe shortage of skilled healthcare workers.

This trend, he emphasised, not only undermines the country’s ability to provide adequate healthcare but also affects the significant investments made in training these professionals.

“For the medical students particularly, the biggest impact of Japa is in the health sector, where it has left a huge deficit. And we are thinking of investing in training students. But we need to bind them over, because it doesn’t make sense to train a medical doctor, and the next day he is jetting out of the country. How do we avoid that? Because if he has access to this kind of scholarship, he would then be trained for export,” he said.

To stem the tide of medical professionals leaving the country, the governor advocated for the provision of attractive incentives to encourage them to remain in Nigeria.

These incentives, he suggested, could include competitive salaries, improved working conditions, opportunities for career advancement, and other benefits that would make practicing medicine in Nigeria a more appealing and rewarding option.

He added: “But I know in those days for medical students, they were placed on salary Level Seven, as soon as they stepped into the clinicals. For medical doctors, veterinary doctors, nurses, and so on, by the time you are doing your clinical, you are actually on the government payroll.

“As soon as you graduated, you automatically joined the state service. And you were required to put in a shift for many years before you were at liberty to go anywhere. If not, we’re simply going to be producing for the developed countries, because they are not giving birth to children. They need manpower, and we will continue to simply service them.

“We have no other country except Nigeria. If we don’t stay back to take care of our country, nobody will. So there has to be a dose of patriotism that ensures that people make a conscious, deliberate commitment to contribute to national development.

“You can go get your education anywhere in the world, but as as long as you were trained with Nigerian taxes, there should be a minimum level of expectation that the nation should have over you.”

In March 2024, Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, disclosed that about 16,000 doctors left the country in the last five years.

He revealed that the country had only 55,000 licensed doctors to serve its growing population of over 200 million.

This translates to an average patient-to-doctor ratio of 3,636:1. While the World Health Organisation (WHO) does not have a universally recommended patient-to-doctor ratio, some sources suggest a desirable ratio of one doctor per 1,000 population.

Earlier, the MD/CEO of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, expressed President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to ensuring that no student in public tertiary institutions is denied educational opportunities due to financial constraints.

The Managing Director used the opportunity to thoroughly explain how the scheme operates to the governor.

“Our purpose here is to make sure that the indigenes and those from other places who are studying in this great state, know how to access the funding that’s available for them,” he said.

“We must ensure that all states in Nigeria, all indigenes benefit from this scheme.”