By Lillian Okenwa
Doctors in the country were outraged when Femi Adesina, a former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, remarked that his former boss would have died long ago if he had used Nigerian hospitals for medical treatments. They described Adesina’s statement as ignorant, insensitive, and disrespectful to thousands of medical professionals who continue to serve under challenging conditions in the country.
Buhari died in a hospital in the United Kingdom on 13 July 2025.
Piqued by Adesina’s statement, a journalist, Ejiofor Alike, noted that the comments “…exposed the failure of successive Nigerian leaders to fix public hospitals and their apparent lack of faith in the country’s world-class private hospitals… It is very shameful that the leaders of the giant of Africa have continued to search for foreign hospitals for themselves and their loved ones, instead of fixing government hospitals or patronising world-class private ones to save scarce public resources…”
On the heels of the Buhari/Adesina debate, a post making the rounds on social media with relation to how ex-Senator, Ibrahim Musa Kontagora, died on Thursday, 7 August 2025, in an Abuja hospital is gaining traction. A part of the post — Nigeria Happened to Senator Kontagora, But Who’s Next? — reads: “I found out that the former senator was denied a critical, life-saving surgery at a private hospital in Abuja because he could not immediately pay the remaining $15,000 (₦23 million) of his bill. He had already deposited half. But the hospital allegedly refused to proceed until the full balance was paid….”
Lending his voice to the need for political leaders to take more interest in the health sector for the benefit of all and giving more clarity to the Senator Kontagora hospital story and death, law teacher and author, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, had this to say.
“To Senator Musa Kontangora’s soul, I wish safe passage; to his family, I pray for fortitude. That said, I find much of the emoting in this piece both misplaced and overblown. I will explain.
“Let me begin with some clarification. To my knowledge, his mates in the 7th Senate rallied and raised the resources that the hospital asked for. By the time they could get the money to the hospital, however, his death had already been certified.
“Ibrahim Musa Kontangora was a one-time Senator of the Federal Republic. He should not be confused for a poor man. He surely was not one. He was not a victim of poverty; he was a victim of poor systems. That is something he could have done something about as a Senator. What did he do when he had the opportunity to?
“All over this country, daily, we see poor, working people succumb to impoverishment and die when they could easily have lived if we cared to build and nourish a system that cares for everyone: a mother losing her child because she does not have N1,500 for anti-malarial; a retired teacher dying because he cannot afford the cost of Insulin. Those are true cases for lamentation.
“When a Senator dies in these circumstances affecting Sen. Kontangora, however, we must have the courage to ask the inconvenient question: what did he do in the Senate?
“Most of Nigeria’s Senators would rather play along for the 4WD; the ‘juicy’ committees; preferments & allowances instead of looking out for the public good that they were sent there to advance.
“When, therefore, a Senator – serving or former – passes in these circumstances, I do not see the injustice of the Nigerian condition; I call it payback. No one is high enough in Nigeria to elevate beyond the dysfunctions that we choose to perpetuate. May the Almighty do His thing.”
According to Calixtus Okoruwa, a Nigerian public relations and management consultant, “Our rulers would rather ride in long convoys of SUVs, award dubious contracts and amass allowances for themselves, than provide guidance and see to the development of critical public infrastructure.
“There’s hardly running water anymore in Nigeria. Citizens provide boreholes for themselves. All over our streets, men and women are openly relieving themselves by the roadsides as there are no public toilets.
“Public hospitals are generally run-down and inefficient. When former rulers succumb to these failings of society, we should indeed ask them, ‘as a senator, what did you do to better the situation? ‘”
Funke Egbemode wraps up the conversation: “In three years, about 42,000 nurses that we trained with billions of naira left Nigeria. Most of them are in the NHS system in the UK. Five years ago, both Nigeria and UK needed more nurses than they had. UK system knew what to do and did it. The country offered our nurses more money than they had ever seen, hauled them on the plane and left our healthcare stranded.
“The National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives estimates that Nigeria currently needs at least 800,000 additional nurses and midwives to meet its current health care requirements. Meanwhile, as at March 2020, there were only 180,709 registered nurses and 126,863 midwives. Deduct 15,000 nurses who japaed in 2024 alone and imagine how bad things have become.
“What exactly were our leaders thinking, that the hospitals will run themselves, that those in the administrative departments will transform into midwives with the wave of a magic wand?
“We lost 42,000 nurses in three years. In one year we lost 3,974 doctors. And we did what? What was the right thing to do? Filling the gaps with fresh employment of nurses and doctors would have made a little sense, right? Increasing the wages of those who stayed or are yet to leave would have also helped, but did we do any of that?
“The cost of training one doctor in Nigeria has been put conservatively at $21,000 and we let them go! “Let us leave God to judge the men of yesterday who did not do what they ought to have done. Let us come to the ones in charge today. Let us ask them if their legacy will also be to do things by the book, hide behind civil service rules and thumb their noses at us by being politically correct.
“Dear Ministers of Health, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate and Dr Iziak Adekunle Salako, will these hospitals where one doctor is expected to see 50 patients per day and nurses work endless shifts be what you will be remembered for?
“Dear Head of Civil Service of the Federal Republic, Mrs Didi Walson-Jack, do you have plans to do something about the figures on your table showing the nation has more civil servants in Housing, Water Resources, Census offices etc than in the health sector?
“I believe doctors, nurses and teachers should earn more anywhere in the world. Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United States and America agree with me.
“South Africa pays its doctors $3,400 (that is about N5 million per month.) Before you start a protest that doesn’t mean anything, look at those countries again, are they not the ones where Nigerians go to for medical tourism? The lender will always be the master of the debtor. Period.
“Even with the special salary scale for health workers, doctors in Federal Medical Center earn as low as N250,000 and N300,000. South Africa just down the road pays $3,400. What is a smart young doctor supposed to do when he gets that kind of counter offer?
“Maybe because those who fix wages in Nigeria are envious and unpatriotic, because this is nothing personal. Leaders who treat doctors and nurses like clerks will always have blood on their hands.
“How? Because those who cannot afford to go to Canada and Switzerland to get good healthcare will die needless deaths. Because the doctors and nurses will down tools, ignore the dying, and both government and striking medical personnel, after plenty of back and forth will walk through the blood of the dead to sign agreements.
“How many Nigerians have died in how many strikes of doctors and nurses? How many more will die before we agree that we are a nation of bloody money ritualists?”
Nigerians might still remember how nurses at the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital (UCH) were, sometime in 2024, seen in a viral video using the flashlights on their phones to light up the rooms.
