In what many see as an unguarded admission of systemic failure, former presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina recently declared that the late President Muhammadu Buhari might have died had he not sought medical treatment abroad. According to him, the overseas treatment “saved his life,” suggesting that Nigeria’s healthcare system was too broken to save its own leader. This deeply unsettling statement not only lays bare the rot in the country’s health sector, but also highlights the cruel irony: those who hold the power to fix the system are the very ones who flee it when their own lives are on the line.
Expectedly, medical experts have pushed back against this claim, arguing that Nigeria possesses enough skilled professionals and institutions capable of handling complex conditions—if only they were equipped and funded properly. Their argument exposes the heart of the issue: it is not a lack of capacity, but the persistent neglect and sabotage of the system by successive administrations.
Nigeria spends an estimated ₦7 billion annually on medical tourism, according to the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). That’s ₦7 billion not being invested in local hospitals, training, infrastructure, or life-saving equipment. That is ₦7 billion flowing out of a country where children die daily of preventable diseases, where women still lose their lives during childbirth due to inadequate care, and where the poor are left to rely on crumbling public hospitals with neither electricity nor basic medication.
It is nothing short of criminal that in 2025, Nigeria still lacks a single government-owned hospital that can confidently serve its leaders and citizens alike. Many of our so-called “teaching hospitals” have been reduced to “mere consultancy clinics”—a term once infamously used by Buhari himself to describe Nigeria’s state of healthcare back in 1983 when he first overthrew a government. Four decades later, nothing has changed.
The question we must ask—loudly and repeatedly—is: Why should the life of an average Nigerian be worth less than that of a government official?
Leadership is not about escaping the consequences of failure; it is about fixing what is broken. Presidents, governors, ministers, and lawmakers who cannot trust the very hospitals they build and fund should be held to account. It is time to make medical tourism the exception—not the rule. Let every Nigerian leader, from the president down to local government chairpersons, be mandated to use only Nigerian public health facilities. That alone will force a revolution in the sector.
Until our leaders are ready to live—and die—by the systems they provide for the people, nothing will change. And until Nigerians demand this change, we will continue to bury loved ones who died simply because they weren’t rich or powerful enough to board the next flight to London, India, or Dubai.
Healthcare is a right, not a privilege. And if Nigeria must rise, then our hospitals must be made strong enough to save both the powerful and the powerless.
It’s time to stop exporting our sick and importing shame.
