Out of the 6,000 medical doctors the country produces yearly, about 2,000 of them are unable to access placement for housemanship, according to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN).

The Registrar of the Council, Fatimah Kyari, while speaking on the issue on Friday, blamed it on the “Centralised Housemanship System” operational in the country, which can accommodate only 4,000 as against the 6,000 medical graduates produced annually.

Housemanship is the mandatory one-year postgraduate internship for medical graduates. It provides supervised hands-on clinical training in accredited hospitals before full licensure.

Newly-qualified doctors, called house officers, rotate through key departments like medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics.

This builds practical skills in patient care, diagnosis, and management under senior supervision.

Kyari made the disclosure when she appeared before the Senate Committee on Health chaired by Senator Banigo Ipaliboto to defend the MDCN’s 2026 budget proposals.

The registrar called for the inclusion of both state and privately-owned hospitals in the training system in a bid to accommodate all the 6,000 medical graduates.

She said, “A total of about 6,000 medical doctors are produced annually from the various medical schools while the Centralised Housemanship System in operation has capacity for 4, 000 medical doctors .

“As a way of accommodating the 6,000 at once yearly, there is a need to include state and privately-owned hospitals in the Centralised Housemanship System.”

She explained that expanding the accommodation access would allow all the trainees to enroll at once and help tackle the brain-drain syndrome, better known as ‘japa’, in Nigeria.

Kyari spoke of other challenges, including non-release of budgetary provisions for the work of the council.

For instance, she told the committee that though N1.2billion capital vote was appropriated as capital in 2025, nothing was released to the MDCN.

For overhead, she revealed that only N35.7million was released out of the total of N100m.

For personnel cost, she admitted that N13.8bn was released from the N16.8bn budgeted for the year.

Senator Ipaliboto assured Kyari that the situation would change in 2026 as the committee would make appropriate recommendations to the Senate to address the challenges she enumerated. (Nigerian Tribune)

Update news