By Abiodun Oluwadare
“It fills me with pride that President Buhari chose London to come for his medical treatment,” the Mayor of London remarked on his arrival in Lagos on the day the former President Buhari was buried. To the British politician, it was a feather in the cap of London’s health system, a subtle nod to the enduring global reputation of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). But for Nigerians, that statement should sting like salt on an open wound. It was a reminder that even our leaders, elected by our people, paid by our taxes, do not trust the healthcare system they preside over.
How did we arrive at a place where the President of Africa’s most populous nation must flee abroad for routine medical checks? Where do public hospitals across Nigeria lack the most basic medications? Where expectant mothers deliver babies in candle-lit wards, and oxygen masks are passed between patients like borrowed property?
Nigeria, a nation blessed with brilliant minds, vast natural resources, and a promising post-independence legacy, has inexplicably allowed its healthcare sector to rot.
At independence in 1960, the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan was a symbol of Africa’s medical excellence. It served as a regional referral centre. European patients and professionals worked alongside Nigerians in a model system of healthcare delivery.
Our doctors were respected globally, our institutions were robust, and our trajectory was upward.
Today, that legacy lies in ruins. The same UCH now struggles with power outages, staff shortages, and dilapidated equipment. Generators power emergency surgeries, patients buy their syringes, and nurses improvise with candlelight. Many state-owned hospitals have become little more than glorified mortuaries. As the late General Sani Abacha once lamented, our hospitals have become “mere consulting clinics.”
From Lagos to Kano, Calabar to Sokoto, tales abound of ordinary Nigerians dying preventable deaths, children perishing from malaria, mothers bleeding to death during childbirth, and accident victims left unattended due to the absence of trained trauma personnel.
In rural areas, the situation is worse. There are communities where the nearest functional health facility is several kilometres away, and even then, it may not have paracetamol, let alone an ambulance.
Meanwhile, our political elite live in a bubble of privilege. A headache? Fly to Germany. A routine check-up? Off to London. Eye trouble? Dubai awaits.
They budget billions of naira annually for medical tourism while public hospitals beg for soap, gloves, and blood transfusion bags. Ironically, some of these same politicians campaigned on promises to end medical tourism. Once in power, they became its biggest beneficiaries.
And the fallout? Nigeria loses over ₦500 billion ($1 billion) annually to medical tourism. That’s money that could build world-class hospitals in every geopolitical zone, retain our top doctors, and make health services affordable for all citizens. Instead, these funds enrich foreign economies while our people die in pain and silence.
Our doctors, some of the best-trained in the world, are voting with their feet. Frustrated by poor wages, lack of equipment, insecurity, and disrespect from policymakers, they are leaving en masse.
The UK’s General Medical Council reported that over 10,000 Nigerian doctors are currently practising in the UK alone. Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the United States are also active recruiters. And who can blame them? In Nigeria, many doctors work in appalling conditions, unpaid for months, yet expected to perform miracles.
In a cruel twist of irony, lawmakers have proposed legislation to restrict doctors from leaving Nigeria within five years of graduation.
This is laughable and tragic in equal measure. Do you imprison professionals you neither trained adequately nor paid fairly?
The idea betrays a failure to understand the root of the problem: systemic neglect, not lack of patriotism.
What then is the hope of the Nigerian masses? If the President can’t be treated in the hospitals he governs, what chance does the average citizen have?
The poor are left at the mercy of decaying infrastructure, overworked personnel, and a system that has lost its soul. Many Nigerians now depend on traditional healers or self-medication, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
This is not just a policy failure, it is a moral and humanitarian disaster. A nation that cannot care for its sick is a nation in decline.
A nation whose leaders reject its hospitals is a nation without direction.
A nation that turns a blind eye while its best doctors flee is a nation setting itself on fire.
Healthcare should not be a privilege for the wealthy or the politically connected; it is a fundamental right. Good healthcare is not a luxury. It is the backbone of any serious, functioning state. Without it, there can be no meaningful development. You cannot have a productive economy if your workforce is unhealthy.
You cannot have national security if your hospitals cannot even manage trauma from gunshots or explosions. You cannot build a future when children die because vaccines are unavailable or because a nurse fainted on night duty due to hunger.
So, what must be done?
First, the Nigerian government must declare a state of emergency in the health sector. This is not hyperbole, but it is a reality. Federal and state governments must prioritise healthcare infrastructure, increase budgetary allocations, and track expenditures transparently. Building world-class hospitals in Abuja is not enough; every Nigerian deserves quality care, not just the capital’s elite.
Second, the welfare of medical professionals must be taken seriously. Better pay, consistent salaries, career development, and safe working environments are non-negotiable if we want to retain our talent.
Third, there must be serious political will to end medical tourism among public office holders. If the President, ministers, governors, and lawmakers were legally compelled to use Nigerian hospitals, the sector would transform within a year. What you are forced to use, you are compelled to fix.
Finally, there must be accountability. Leaders who neglect public hospitals while enjoying elite care abroad must be called out. Civil society, media, religious institutions, and the citizenry must speak truth to power until change comes.
Nigeria is bleeding, not just from poverty and insecurity, but from the collapse of its healthcare system. We cannot build a virile, prosperous, or peaceful nation on the backs of broken hospitals, abandoned health workers, and forgotten patients.
There is nothing to be proud of in medical tourism. True pride will return only when a president, any president, confidently walks into a Nigerian hospital, gets treated, and walks out alive and well.
That will be our true independence, not just from colonialism but from the shame of self-imposed exile.
Until then, we remain a nation in medical exile.
Oluwadare, a professor of political science, is a lecturer at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna.
