By James Moses (9News Nigeria -Jos)

The Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN), Faruk Abubakar said 42,000 nurses have left the country in the last three years.

Farouk comments came on the heels of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) protest against the new certificate verification guildlines issued by the Council.

NMCN had issued a circular saying application seeking verification of certificates to foreign nursing boards and councils must have two years of qualification experience and also pay a non application fee.

Speaking about the decision of the Council, he said the development is in line with the International best practices, adding that so many nurses in the country have left in the past few years.

“Let me make it clear today, in the last three years over 42,000 nurses left this country and country needs them”, he said on Tuesday’s edition of Channels Television’s Tuesday Morning Brief.

“Now If we allow every Nigerians leave as they graduate, who is going to handle our health care services? who is going to provide these services? we are Nigerians and it is our responsibility to these services.

‘So, we are not against anybody traveling but Nigerians must be served and must be provided with this quality health care since we are producing the quality and best nurses that are working anywhere in world’.

“He said, the Council had gotten several complaints about relocation of nurses from the country. But such relocations should be done rightly.

“Just last year, a number of nurses were found in with fake documents in America and when we did a background search, about eight of them were not in our database, they hadn’t collected their verification letter or letter of good standing and they faked the documents.

“We don’t want to recall the individual because it will dent the image of the country. So we decided to strengthen the verification process before they leave and that’s what we did,”, he said.