Nigeria’s Medical Association fractured openly Thursday when an emergency assembly of delegates suspended its national president and the body’s electoral committee, accusing them of unconstitutionally blocking six candidates from contesting upcoming national elections — and installing a caretaker committee to run the association while disciplinary proceedings are prepared against the suspended officials.

The Emergency Delegates Meeting, attended by 63 members including chairmen and secretaries from 23 states and the Federal Capital Territory, voted unanimously to suspend Professor Bala Audu and the National Officers Committee he leads, following what members described as a deliberate and constitutionally indefensible disqualification of six aspirants who had been duly nominated by their state branches for positions in the NMA’s Annual General Meeting elections scheduled to hold in Kano between April 27 and May 3.

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The NOC’s stated justification for the disqualifications — that the six candidates had submitted incomplete documentation — was rejected outright by the delegates. “The excuse used on these candidates is alien to us,” said Dr Omotayo Adetunji, who chaired the emergency meeting. “We have tried all what we could to resolve and address this matter peacefully before this EDM but all to no avail. The NOC adamantly refused.” He said the affected candidates had been properly nominated by their respective state branches and had submitted their forms, only for NOC officials to announce the disqualifications without constitutional basis.

The meeting, convened after 105 members appended their signatures to a petition covering two-thirds of NMA’s state branches, reversed all six disqualifications by unanimous vote and directed that the candidates be permitted to contest their positions in the upcoming elections. A caretaker committee led by former Secretary General Dr Ekpe Phillips was constituted to manage association affairs in the interim and to ensure the suspended officials face the NMA’s disciplinary committee.

Dr Emeka Ayogu, chairman of the NMA’s FCT branch, said the emergency meeting had become unavoidable given what he described as the unnecessary arrogance and impunity of the Audu-led administration. “We want NMA that will remain united, we want NMA that will talk about the rights and welfare of members,” he said, framing the intervention as a defence of institutional integrity rather than a factional power play.

The dispute lands at a sensitive moment for Nigerian medicine. The NMA has been one of the more active voices in advocacy around healthcare funding, doctors’ welfare and the ongoing brain drain pulling Nigerian physicians abroad in large numbers. Internal instability at the national leadership level risks distracting the association from those external battles at precisely the moment when its unity and credibility carry the most weight.