Our hospitals and prosperity on the horizon

WEDNESDAY COLUMN By Egena Sunday Ode

I have sat with the words of President Bola Tinubu ringing in my head since last Tuesday. Speaking to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria in Abuja, he said the economy had turned a corner. “The alarm for bankruptcy and dark tunnel of uncertainty that we had when I came in has been changed,” he said. “This government has stabilised, and there is prosperity on the horizon. Life is improving.”

I want to believe that. I really do. If the naira-dollar rate can hold steady, and if the food inflation that made Nigerians curse May 29, 2023, can truly be tamed, then I should have no doubt that we have come through some of our worst moments in the last three years.

Also penultimate Friday, the President met with Nigerian doctors in the diaspora. The room was full of people who left for London, Houston, Toronto, and Saudi Arabia, but who still call Nigeria home. The conversation was about brain gain. The ask was: come back, teach, invest, help us rebuild a health system that has been stretched thin for too long.

Both meetings tell me something about where this administration wants to go. One appeals to faith and national morale. The other appeals to expertise and service. But for either of them to matter to me, and to you reading this, we must feel it where it hurts and where it heals: in the clinic down the street, in the health centre in the village, in the teaching hospital where a mother prays over her child at 2am.

I will be fair. There are strides. I have seen the memos and the announcements. The Federal Government has approved the recruitment of more than 20,000 health workers to ease the staffing shortages that have haunted us for years. The Basic Health Care Provision Fund has been doubled. There is a renewed push to revitalise primary health centres. Under the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Initiative, we are hearing more about data, accountability, and upgrading equipment. Investment in local pharmaceutical manufacturing is being scaled up. These are not small things. If sustained, they can change the story.

I was especially moved by one story. The upgrade of the Snake Bite Hospital in Kaltungo, Gombe State, to a full research centre. For years, Kaltungo has been the frontline not just for Nigeria but for West Africa. People travel across borders to get there. To elevate it is to say: we see this burden, and we will meet it with science. It tells me that specialised, rural facilities can be prioritised. That research can be rooted where the problem is most acute. That is the kind of targeted intervention that builds confidence.

But then I remember June. House officers in UATH Abuja, UCTH Calabar, FMC Umuahia and five other federal hospitals withdrew services over unpaid salaries. In early July, doctors in Lagos downed tools over deductions and arrears. Nurses have been on the streets protesting a June circular that they say slashes their allowances.

These are not isolated incidents. They are alarms. They are the sound of a system under pressure, groaning.

When the bishops met the President, they raised security, education and poverty. I kept thinking: each of those ends up in a hospital. What good is security if victims of violence arrive and there is no surgeon, no blood, no theatre light? What good is education if our medical graduates have no senior registrars to mentor them, and so they leave the moment they are licensed? What good is fighting poverty if a family has to sell its generator, its land, its future, to pay for care that should be accessible?

The dialogue with diaspora doctors gives me hope. They have indicated their willingness to teach, to invest, to do telemedicine, to come for missions. But I asked myself a hard question: how do we ask them to return when the colleagues currently here are owed months of pay and are working with tools that break down? Patriotism is powerful. I have it. You have it. But patriotism alone cannot run a night shift, and it cannot pay school fees.

The President told the bishops, “we don’t have another country but here.” I agree. And that sentiment must extend to the people who keep the health system running. Our doctors are not leaving because they hate Nigeria. Our nurses are not resigning because they are ungrateful. They are leaving because the conditions for staying have become untenable.

So what does prosperity on the horizon mean to me? It cannot just be GDP numbers and investor forums. It has to be measured by the experience of an ordinary citizen who walks into a public hospital and receives timely, dignified care from a motivated and well-equipped professional.

That means paying salaries on time. Every time. It means reviewing welfare packages that have been static for a decade while inflation has run wild. It means expanding recruitment to match need, not just to fill quotas. It means ensuring that facilities have drugs on the shelves and equipment that works. It means protecting health workers from violence, and from policy inconsistencies that chip away at morale.

Last week in Abuja, people gathered at the Africa Emerging Markets Forum to talk about resilience. I listened. True resilience, to me, will not be in a slide deck. It will be in a health system that does not collapse when there is a surge, that retains its people, and that delivers for the citizen at the last mile.

I believe brain gain can help. The 70 diaspora professionals the First Lady announced will return for missions and training can accelerate things. But brain gain cannot be the foundation. The foundation must be the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab scientists and cleaners who are here now, holding the system together with thread and prayer.

I think about the young house officer I met in Makurdi who told me she loves her job but hasn’t been paid in three months. I think about the nurse who told me she buys her own gloves. I think about the patient in Kaltungo who will now have access to research-driven care. All these stories live in the same country.

If we arrive at this promised prosperity with empty wards, with demoralised staff, with patients who still have to “mobilize” before treatment begins, then we have not arrived at all.

Mr. President, the bishops, the diaspora doctors, all of us want the same thing: a Nigeria that works. But prosperity must have a human face. And in Nigeria, that face is often behind a hospital mask, sweating under Personal Protective Equipment, PPE, trying to save a life.

As we build that Nigeria, let prosperity include our hospitals.