Nigeria Social media was agog over the weekend when a picture of Five (5) sisters from Nigeria, who are all doctors in different fields of the medical profession, went up.
The all-women doctors from the same family have become torchbearers for others, who have over the decades been sidelined due to inequality and lack of formal education.
School participation remains a major challenge across developing nations and Nigeria is not an exception, particularly in northern states where the extremism of Boko Haram, an Islamist militant group, targets school going girls.
It is in this light that the Aliu sisters have been earning admiration from technocrats, academics, political elites, as well as other social groups from around the country. According to afrotech.com, the Nigerian family consists of Salamat Aliu, the first female neurosurgeon in West Africa, Halima Aliu, a plastic surgeon, Khadijah Aliu, a family medicine physician, Raliat Aliu, an obstetrician and Medinah Aliu, a community health physician.
The sisters are said to be from Okene, Kogi state.
Former Nigerian vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, took to Twitter urging Nigerians to educate the entire society by simply educating the women. “Awesome. If you educate a woman, you educate the family and the community,” Atiku wrote. Twitter users also rallied behind the sisters to congratulate them on achieving such heights.
Also, in a recent report by Fareed Zakaria, a CNN presenter, Nigerians are the most educated immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the US of which 59% aged 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree.
It could be recalled that the House of Representatives Committee on the Diaspora published a report that about 77 per cent of members of associations of black doctors practicing in the United States of America were Nigerians. “In the US alone, about 77 per cent of black doctors in associations are Nigerians; they are willing to come back home and assist in various ways to develop our health sector,” said the report.
