The Nigerian Medical Association on Sunday warned allied health professionals, under the aegis of the Joint Health Sector Unions, not to usurp the powers and responsibilities of doctors.

The President of the NMA, Prof. Innocent Ujah, sounded the warning in Abuja during a press conference attended by the body’s National Secretary, Dr Philips Ekpe, in response to the protest by JOHESU on the public hearing on five related bills, organised by the Senate Committee on Health.

“We appeal to the general public and the NASS to ignore the dying voice of the paranoiac JOHESU who have sustained their attacks on Nigerian doctors purely out of jealousy and envy, to get through the backdoor what they could not achieve while in school.

“NMA wishes to invite JOHESU members to join forces with the medical and dental practitioners to improve the health circumstances of our people rather than threatening to go on strike for the wrong reasons at any slightest flimsy excuses.

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“Finally, I wish to appeal to governments and good spirited individuals to advise members of JOHESU and their cohort to go to medical school to read medicine or forever leave doctors and the medical profession alone. They should stop expressing their frustration towards a very intelligent group and members of the noble profession of human medicine”, Ujah said in the text of the conference, titled, ‘JOHESU’s outbursts: Time for caution.’

He described the group as “misguided individuals, acting under an amorphous unregistered body unknown to law (and) are hell bent on blackmailing the Senate and particularly the Chairman of its Committee on Health (Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe) over matters they could not logically advance during the public hearing.”