New year edition!!

  

A NEW MALIGNANCY: DELAY IN INDUCTION

By Sunkanmi Arogbokun OD.

Optometry programme in Nigeria is as old as the Nigerian Civil war, with the first optometric professional program in Nigeria, kicks off in the University of Benin in 1972. The program was established in the faculty of Science by Dr. Paul Olekanna Ogbuehi. Optometry has now transverse its historical locale and has gone far to being offered in two prestigious tertiary institutions in the northern part of the country. 

The Optometrist and Dispensing Optician Board (ODORBN) act was established in 1989 and has since been saddled with the responsibility of regulating the profession, inducting and also provide high standard of education in accordance with existing laws for optometrists and dispensing optician in Nigeria. 

ODORBN over the years have tried to build an enabling environment for the profession and also ensure that optometrists are people of personal integrity with global competitive competencies. However, the profession still a polar of the said. 

Optometry in Nigeria is suffused with problems of regulation, poor working condition, restriction of duty in the public medical facilities, inadequate learning infrastructure, inadequacy in research exposure and delay in induction of graduates; the latter perceived benign years back, now malignant. 

Delay in induction is now the order of the day as regards optometry in Nigeria. Although, delay generally in Nigeria is perceived as norm, due to the incessant strike of the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU). However, newly graduated doctors now also have the board to contend with. This menace is unbecoming, till today optometry students are faced with this abnormal trend turning conventional. The case of University of Benin 2017/2018 set; these set of doctors wrote their final exams October 2018 only to be inducted a year and two months after their final exams. Another case like this is that of Madonna University graduates, that wrote their final exams December 2020 only to wait till January 2022 before they were inducted. At the time this article was written two optometry schools in Nigeria, namely University of Ilorin and Madonna university are yet to induct their current optometry graduates. 

Who is to blame for this? is it the students who have satisfied all the requirements of their institutions by passing all the prescribed examinations or optometry schools who have trained these students with the scarce means provided by their institution or the university that has admitted and provided the learning arena for the training of optometry doctors or ODORBN that is saddled with the responsibility of inducting these doctors. Obviously, it would be unfair to blame the students. Nevertheless, this is happening because of the negligence of some few individuals in position of authority, whom destiny has chosen to design the future of the profession but have failed to. These individuals have not just failed these doctors, also have they failed the society that these doctors were trained to serve.