Medical Lecturers Warn FG Against More Students Without More Facilities

Medical lecturers have warned the Federal Government that admitting more students into Colleges of Medicine, without first building the halls, laboratories and workforce to carry them, will weaken the quality of doctors Nigeria produces.

The warning came from the University College Hospital, Ibadan chapter of the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria. The chapter’s Chairman, Dr Oluseyi Akande, spoke in Ibadan during the association’s biennial press briefing, held as part of its 2026 Annual General Meeting.

Akande said the government’s plan to raise admission quotas — including at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan — was well intended. Nigeria does not have enough doctors, and training more of them is a reasonable answer to that shortage. His concern is the order in which it is being done.

‘You can’t teach 350 students in a hall built for far fewer’

According to him, medical training is not a lecture that can simply be repeated to a larger crowd.

“The implication is that the training is not going to be standard. If you have 350 students and you don’t have a hall that can take 350 students, what do you do?” he asked.

He described medicine as an apprenticeship, one that depends on steady, close contact between students and the consultants training them. When the numbers rise faster than the space, the beds and the teachers, that contact thins out — and so does the learning.

Akande said the Federal Government had stepped in to provide infrastructure for the expanded intake, but that the work has been slow. The College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, has been taking in more students since last year, while some of the promised buildings remain unfinished.

Fewer teachers, more work

The association also called for a fresh round of recruitment of medical lecturers. Consultants, Akande said, are now juggling clinical duties with the teaching of both undergraduate medical students and resident doctors, at a time when many colleagues have left the country for jobs abroad.

That migration has left some departments at UCH without resident doctors at all, pushing consultants into duties they would normally supervise rather than perform.

Equipment funds still unreleased

Beyond staffing, MDCAN asked the government to release money already approved in the 2025 budget for life-saving equipment at UCH.

“I would also like to draw attention to the fact that the Federal Government of Nigeria is yet to release funds to the University College Hospital for the procurement of many life-saving equipment budgeted for in 2025,” Akande said.

He urged that the money be released without further delay, noting that the hospital needs the equipment for clinical work, training and research alike.

The association further asked the government to constitute the Boards of Management of Federal Tertiary Hospitals, saying the hospitals cannot run smoothly or deliver their mandates without them.

Appeal against attacks on health workers

MDCAN used the briefing to appeal to Nigerians to stop attacking doctors, nurses and other health workers, calling such violence a growing problem across the country.

Akande said health workers understand how serious their responsibilities are, but that some things lie outside their control — old or broken equipment, and an unreliable power supply among them. He asked patients and relatives who are unhappy with their treatment to seek redress through proper channels instead of raising their hands.

The wider quota problem

The warning lands in a system already strained by quota disputes. The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria sets carrying capacities based on what each school can realistically handle — teaching hospitals, lecturers, laboratories, beds and supervision.

Where universities have admitted beyond those limits, the cost has fallen on students years later. At the University of Ilorin, for instance, graduates were left waiting for induction after the school presented fewer candidates to the MDCN than had qualified.

MDCAN’s message in Ibadan is essentially a request to avoid repeating that pattern on a national scale: build the capacity first, then fill it.

Activities for the 2026 Annual General Meeting included a scientific conference, sporting events, courtesy visits, a luncheon and a thanksgiving service.