By joshua Give Us Back Our Hospitals: Inside Nigeria’s Silent Healthcare Emergency
By Alao Adamadamosi Sunday,arpa
There is a quiet emergency unfolding in Nigeria—one that does not make the front pages as often as political crises or economic forecasts, but one that claims lives every single day. It is the slow, painful collapse of a healthcare system that millions of Nigerians depend on. Behind the noise of national discourse lies a stark reality: public hospitals are understaffed, underfunded, and increasingly unfit for purpose. Patients wait for hours—sometimes days—for care that may never come. Doctors and nurses are leaving in droves. And ordinary citizens are left to bear the crushing weight of a system that has failed them.
The demand is simple, and it is urgent: Give us back our hospitals.
At the Federal Medical Centre in Abeokuta, patients arrive before dawn only to be turned away because the day’s patient quota has already been filled. One patient recounted arriving at 8 a.m., being told to return the next day, and finally seeing a doctor at 3 p.m. after arriving shortly after 7 a.m.. At Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, patients describe waiting more than six hours before seeing a doctor. “We have been here since 8:30 a.m. It is now 3 p.m., just for my wife to see the doctor,” one elderly man said. “This is bad”.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the daily reality of a system buckling under the weight of a severe specialist shortage. As Nigeria’s burden of non-communicable diseases—hypertension, diabetes, cancer, kidney disease—grows, the number of trained specialists available to treat patients continues to dwindle. Patients are left stranded, their conditions worsening while they wait for care that the system cannot deliver.
The crisis is compounded by an unprecedented wave of medical brain drain. More than 60 per cent of Nigeria’s qualified radiographers now practise abroad, leaving the country with fewer than 5,000 active radiographers against a WHO-recommended estimate of 50,000—less than 5 per cent of the required workforce. The story is the same across specialties. Poor remuneration, obsolete equipment, and unfriendly working conditions are pushing the nation’s best-trained health professionals to the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
Those who remain are stretched to breaking point. At Delta State University Teaching Hospital, doctors have warned that the institution—once celebrated as a world-class quaternary centre—has deteriorated into a facility struggling to provide even basic services. Essential equipment has broken down. Electricity bills of over N50 million monthly have forced power rationing. Basic clinical tools like stethoscopes and blood pressure monitors are inadequate or non-functional. X-ray services have virtually collapsed. “The theatre complex is presently functioning below acceptable standards,” the doctors warned.
The decay is not limited to tertiary hospitals. Across the country, primary healthcare centres—the first point of contact for millions of Nigerians—are in a state of shocking disrepair. In Kakau, Kaduna State, patients huddle in corners while rainwater drips through leaking roofs onto medical records and benches. Pregnant women in active labour are sometimes left stranded at night because insecurity prevents staff from staying overnight. In Akwa Ibom and Ebonyi, investigations have exposed filthy conditions, crumbling buildings, empty drug shelves, and a severe shortage of trained health workers. These are the facilities meant to deliver equitable, quality healthcare under Nigeria’s Health Sector Renewal Plan—yet they are failing the very communities they were built to serve.
At the root of this crisis is a funding catastrophe. Nigeria’s health expenditure stands at roughly 4 to 4.3 per cent of GDP, far below the 15 per cent benchmark of the Abuja Declaration that Nigeria itself signed. But the problem is not just how much is budgeted—it is how little is actually released. In 2025, out of a N218 billion capital budget for health, only N36 million was released—a staggering 0.0165 per cent. Capital projects have been stalled, equipment cannot be procured, and infrastructure continues to decay while allocated funds remain locked away.
Meanwhile, the burden falls on ordinary Nigerians. Out-of-pocket payments account for 74 per cent of the country’s total healthcare spending, with the public sector contributing just 14.4 per cent. Health insurance coverage remains woefully low, reaching only about 13 per cent of the population by 2025. For millions of families, accessing care means choosing between medical treatment and putting food on the table. Self-medication and traditional remedies become the only options—sometimes with tragic consequences.
The evidence is overwhelming, and the human cost is immeasurable. Patients are dying not because their conditions are untreatable, but because the system is broken. Hospitals that should be sanctuaries of healing have become places of neglect and despair. The government’s promises of reform ring hollow when capital budgets go unreleased, when facilities crumble, and when the professionals who could save lives are forced to leave.
The call is not for sympathy. It is for accountability. It is for the urgent release of budgeted funds, the revitalisation of primary healthcare centres, the equipping of hospitals with functioning diagnostic tools, and the retention of Nigeria’s medical workforce through decent pay and working conditions. It is for a health insurance system that genuinely protects the poor, not one that leaves 74 per cent of spending on the shoulders of households.
Most of all, it is for the recognition that healthcare is not a privilege—it is a right. And when a nation’s hospitals fail, the nation itself is failing.
Mr. President, governors, policymakers: the people are waiting. Give us back our hospitals.
Alao Adamadamosi Sunday writes from Lokoja.