Many Nigerians die on a daily basis from sicknesses and diseases that can be easily prevented or cured in many other parts of the world. To compound issues, Nigerians seem to have abandoned their faith in the hands of the many Nigerian corrupt political leaders who are insensitive to the cause of ordinary Nigerian populace. Why should Nigerians just bemoan, suffer in silence, and move on as if nothing has happened to them, as if all is well with their government and political leadership? Until our leaders in Nigeria come to their senses and realize the importance of sound indigenous socio-economic system, Nigerian doctors, other healthcare workers and professionals will continue to migrate in droves to other countries of the world.


Undeniably, Nigerian healthcare system is one of the worst in the world. There is a severe shortage of healthcare workers, particularly doctors, pharmacists, and nurses, and health institutions in the country are meager in number for the teeming population. The few existing ones in urban and rural areas have for long crumbled, begging for government funding and rehabilitation. It is high time Nigerians realized that there is no single functioning hospital in the entire country if what is obtainable in developed nations is a yardstick for measurement.

It is mind-boggling that fifty years after Nigeria's independence, Nigerian medical students and young graduates from nursing schools have no well-equipped hospitals in the country to practice what they are taught in schools and to advance their skills. Prescription drugs are scarce, exorbitant, and out of the reach of an average Nigerian. The few drugs that are available in the market are difficult to distinguish from good, expired or imitation ones by unsuspecting Nigerians. Government policies on health issues are besieged with loopholes; their implementation is inept due to unnecessary bureaucracies, lack of quality improvement foresight, and corrupt political leadership in the country. To make the matters worse, electricity supply in our hospitals, homes, offices, industries, and other places is erratic or epileptic. In fact, it has become a tall dream to have an uninterrupted full electric supply in any part of Nigeria for a straight twenty-four hour period or for several days without a power outage. As a result, it becomes a big risk to carry out medical surgeries and other invasive procedures in the few existing Nigerian hospitals, due to incessant power failures.

Instead of finding a way to correct or solve these socio-infrastructural and health problems and imbalances in the country, improve our indigenous facilities, so that Nigeria would join the comity of developed health systems in the world, our short-sighted, inept, and corrupt public leaders choose to travel out of the country in search of medical treatment, even for the slightest sickness. The irony of it is that most of these Nigerian corrupt leaders, as private individuals, never dreamt of traveling abroad for medical attention, and some of them have not even made a foreign journey since their birth but immediately they are elected or appointed into political offices, their craze for foreign medicare starts like a wild fire. This they do at the expense of Nigerian tax-payers and public funds and, at times, their foreign medical trips engulf unspeakable millions of dollars for the most easily treatable ailments, millions of money which in organized human societies could have been invested in developing efficient domestic health care system for the common good of the people.
One may ask: how long will Nigerian leaders continue to depend on the developed nations for their medical treatment? Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Nigeria’s former military dictator, from 1985-1993, presided over the longest transition program in human history. He flew in and out of Europe for medical check-ups as if his ancestral lineage is traced to that continent. Babangida’s frequent medical trips to France in particular, as Nigeria’s head-of-state were for a mere radioculopathy case, a wound believed to have been sustained during the Nigerian civil war between 1967 and 1970. As a Nigerian and former head-of-state, Babangida did not feel a pinch of remorse or guilt for taking his late wife, Miriam to the United States, rather than a hospital somewhere in Minna, Abuja, Lagos, or elsewhere in the country for the same purpose. With all the resources available to his disposal, he could have built good hospitals in Nigeria, including a center for cancer treatment, equipped just like the one he patronised in Los Angeles, U.S.A. during his eight-year of military dictatorship. It is unfortunate that the former First Lady died on December 27, 2009 at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Johnsson Comprehensive Cancer Centre in the United States, where she received treatment for ovarian cancer. Today, Nigerians still believe that the money looted by Babangida, along with his cronies during his reign, is enough to make Nigeria the envy of other neighboring states in Africa economically and medically.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice, Atiku Abubakar continued from where Babangida and other past leaders stopped. Both Obasanjo and Atiku traveled to Europe for medical trips with reckless abandon during their eight-year (1999-2007) administration. Atiku, for example, was flown to the United States under “emergency” conditions to treat mere muscle pulls on his knee, which he sustained after a strain in his gymnasium. The message to the rest of the world meant that there is no existing hospital or a medical center in an entire country as rich as Nigeria that could treat an ordinary strain injury. Obasanjo and Atiku’s unrestricted medical trips to foreign lands are a tacit “vote of no confidence” in Nigerian medical services, practitioners, including in the so-called Nigerian leaders. Political leaders in Nigeria, even in their retirement, should be held accountable for failing to provide the necessary infrastructure for efficient medicare in the country.

Mahathir Bin Mohammad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, was and is a good national leader worthy of emulation by Nigerian government officials. Mohammad governed his nation for about 22 years during which period he was able to transform Malaysia from a third world status to an industrial giant. During his administration, he invested heavily in his nation's health-care system; he built numerous, well-furnished hospitals; he even established the first and best world university whose main plank is nursing education. Mohammad never traveled out of his country for once during his administration for medical treatment. Another good leader of sterling quality is the former South Korean Head of state, Gen. Park Chung Hee. He ruled his nation for about 19 years, during which time he established sound indigenous healthcare system, including industrial infrastructure that catapulted a hitherto, under-developed South Korea to the comity of the most technologically advanced nations in the world. Gen. Hee never traveled out of his country for one day to foreign nations in search of medical attention when he became ill. Like Bin Mohammad of Malaysia, he built first-class and high-standard healthcare institutions in South Korea. Again, Nigerian government officials, especially the Chief executives, should borrow a leaf of leadership competence and accountability from Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singapolean Head of State. Lee Kuan Yew was is the architect of what is today known as a highly industrial and developed Singapore. In no small measure, Yew established and advanced indigenous medical system and institutions in his country, and he never traveled out of Singapore to France, Germany, USA, Russia, China etc in search of medical treatment all through his period of administration, a habit that has become a craze among Nigerian leaders.

Although Fidel Castro was rated as a dictator during his years as a Cuban Head of State, his sterling achievements in the development of education, advanced medical technology, and efficient health care system should be things of emulation to our leaders in Nigeria. On account of Fidel Castro's able leadership qualities in capital investment and infrastructural development, barring Western propagandas, Cuba is today one of the world's developed nations. Cuba has the highest number of qualified medical doctors in the world compared to population. Her high-standard healthcare system is a model, and it makes this Caribbean island the third best in the whole of Western Hemisphere, using life span as an index. Canada is the first; Chile is the second while the USA is in the fourth position. Also, Cuba has a lower infant mortality ratio than most of other developed nations of the world, even lower than those of the USA and UK.

It is true that Fidel Castro ruled his country for many years, but he never, for one day, traveled out of Cuba to obtain medical treatment in any foreign country. Today, Cuba is a world-class medical tourist center, and many Nigerians and citizens of other nations rush to this Caribbean island to acquire solid education, especially in the fields of medicine and nursing. Nigerian political leaders should emulate good leaders around the world who have invested much in advancing the standards of their nations' indigenous health care systems and other social infrastructure. The future belongs to those who always see the possibilities before they become realities. Mad rush for foreign medicare by Nigerian political leaders is a great disservice to the nation. Enough is enough.