Nigerian Medical Association presidential hopeful Ofem Enang has publicly rejected his disqualification by the National Officers' Committee, branding the move unconstitutional. Addressing journalists in Abuja on Wednesday, the University of Calabar Professor of Internal Medicine said the committee acted beyond its powers when it barred him and two other candidates over the number of CV copies submitted. Enang argued that the NMA constitution, specifically Article 11(1b), allows any member to contest office once Article 4 conditions are met, leaving no room for administrative technicalities. He accused the committee of trying to skew the poll toward favoured aspirants and demanded immediate reinstatement of all disqualified candidates. Dr Muhammad Isah and Dr Sodipo Olanrewa, the other affected contestants, urged the Nigerian Police and the Federal Capital Territory Administration to step in, warning that tension within the association could escalate.
Enang's disqualification over CV photocopies is a textbook case of bureaucratic weaponisation: a professional guild that should model transparency is instead caught using petty paperwork to purge a popular candidate. The NMA constitution is explicit that eligibility rests on constitutional criteria, yet the National Officers' Committee has chosen to invent an administrative hoop at the eleventh hour. For Nigeria's 80,000-odd doctors, the fallout is immediate: an election meant to produce a leader who can fight for better hospitals, wages and residency slots is now mired in a legitimacy crisis. If the committee prevails, the signal is that internal cliques, not the membership, decide who gets to speak for doctors when they negotiate with government or confront another brain-drain surge.
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