Pharmacists Demand Full Autonomy for LASU Pharmacy Faculty

Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) Lagos branch has advised the Lagos State Government to grant the newly approved Faculty of Pharmacy at Lagos State University full autonomy for maximum benefits of collegiate status.

The Chairman of the Society, Pharm. Gbolagade Iyiola, who spoke during the society’s Scientific Week in Lagos, commended the state government for approving the establishment of a Faculty of Pharmacy at the university.

“We congratulate Governor Sanwo-Olu and encourage him to normalise the complications around the new Pharmacy School, so that it can enjoy take-off,’’ he said.

He advised that the focus of the faculty must be on the award of degrees in PharmD and ‘‘not aligned or subsumed in marriages of inconveniences with any other structure of a calling in the Health profession.’’

“The PSN (Lagos State Branch) finds it necessary to commend the Lagos State Government for finally giving a nod to the establishment of a Faculty of Pharmacy at the Lagos State University. 

The training school deserves to become the benchmark in national discourses as we strongly clamour that its focus must be degrees in PharmD which will become the minimal registerable degree by the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria in a few years.

“Our clarion call to the Lagos State Government will be incomplete if we do not also inform it that the Faculty of Pharmacy at Lagos State University must enjoy a fully autonomous status. A quick check around the nation will confirm that all our recognised 20 faculties are autonomous and not aligned or subsumed in marriages of inconveniences with any other structure of a calling in the Health profession. In more contemporary times, our new schools of Pharmacy enjoy collegiate statutes, while the heads are designated Provosts.

Emphasising on the need to have quality leadership for the faculty, Iyiola said, “It is important to impress upon the Lagos State Government to appoint credible and very experienced scholars in Pharmacy practice to give good quality leadership in the new schools.

Continuing, he said “ordinarily, this should not pose a challenge in Lagos and the southwest geo-political zone where we have an array of seasoned academic pharmacists who are world class teachers and consultants to World Health Organisation (WHO), UNIDO and other world bodies.”

He also commended President Buhari and the National Assembly for actualising the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria Bill after eight years it was started.

Iyiola explained that the “Pharmacy Council of Nigeria Act 2022 is the needed tool to enhance monitoring and control of pharmaceutical premises, expand services through satellite pharmacies, entrench pharmacy based human resource in healthcare, revolutionise industrial pharmacy and restore dignity to community pharmacy.’’

He drew the attention of the state Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to the trade dispute between Lagos State Government and NUAHP (Lagos) and advised him to redress the clamours of Pharmacists and Medical Laboratory Scientists whose professional matters of interest were on the table.

“Sadly, the Lagos State Government has not acknowledged, let alone redressed the fundamental distortions in the memo submitted over six months ago.  The JOHESU/AHPA has again sent a reminder to the Lagos State Government while the PSN (Lagos State Branch) has also recently inundated Governor Sanwo-Olu of some pharmaceutical matters in the last few days,’’ he said.

“The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria reiterates the age-long belief that parties shy away from crisis when respect is mutual in conflict situations. At the parley with the Lagos State Government where a past President of PSN featured, they pointedly submitted that the militating bane in negotiations with government at federal and state levels remains the inclination to send government team dominated by physicians to dialogue with non-physicians cadre health workers.

According to him, “the experience has always been an outright sabotage of concept notes in evolutionary modernity for skills acquisition by Physicians. For the Nigerian Physicians, he must continue on a path of developmental growth while all others must be stagnated.’’

The Lagos PSN chairman said, the society may consider seeking the full intervention of relevant unions in the matter if the government fails to redress their grievances.  

“For us in the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) Lagos State Branch, we shall give the governor of Lagos State a timeline not exceeding a few weeks to redress this matter after which we shall seek full intervention of relevant unions and professional groups. The possibility of occupying Lagos and its Government cannot be ruled out.