By Lemmy Ughegbe, PhD
When nurses go on strike in Nigeria, it is not just an industrial action. It is a loud cry for help and a mirror that reflects the fragility of our national conscience.
For seven harrowing days last week, patients in public hospitals across the country were left unattended as nurses, the backbone of frontline healthcare, withdrew their services in protest.
Their demands were neither novel nor unreasonable. They asked for better pay, adequate staffing, humane working conditions, and the dignity of professional recognition. What is more troubling is not their protest, but the long-standing silence that had met their suffering.
The strike was suspended on August 2, 2025, after negotiations with the Federal Government. Officials promised to meet the nurses’ demands within agreed timelines and assured that no worker would be victimised.
But Nigerians have seen this tragic movie many times before. Governments often make promises to end strikes, not necessarily to solve the underlying problems. Beneath the temporary relief lies a more disturbing truth. The country is bleeding out its caregivers at an alarming rate.
In the past five years alone, Nigeria has lost over 75,000 nurses to countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. The Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria confirmed that over 42,000 nurses applied for verification of credentials in 2023. This is not a signal of curiosity. It is a definitive step in their journey to emigrate. The widespread “japa” phenomenon is no longer a youth protest. It has now become a healthcare evacuation.
Many of these professionals, once committed to serving their homeland, are seeking new beginnings in countries where their work is respected, their pay meaningful, and their safety guaranteed. This is not an unpatriotic drift. It is a rational escape from a broken system.
What does it say of our country when those trained to save lives must go on strike to be heard? When nurses in Nigeria must battle institutional neglect before they can fight for their patients? It says what we have long refused to accept. Our healthcare system is not just underperforming; it is failing. It is collapsing. Not with an explosion, but quietly, ward by ward, patient by patient.
The fallout is heartbreaking. In many rural clinics, patients are regularly turned away or asked to wait endlessly because there is no one available to attend to them. In urban centres, the few personnel left are overwhelmed. Some work nearly 18-hour shifts. Others are left in charge of entire wards alone.
Nigeria’s nurse-to-patient ratio is an embarrassing 1 to 1,600, far below the World Health Organisation’s standard of 1 to 200. In practice, one nurse in Nigeria is expected to do the work of at least eight. This is both dangerous and inhumane.
This crisis is unfolding alongside another grim reality. A recent report by the United Nations World Food Programme reveals that 31 million Nigerians are now food insecure. Of that number, nearly one million are at emergency levels of hunger.
The North-East, plagued by insurgency and poverty, is hardest hit. Here, community nutrition centres and outreach clinics depend on volunteer nurses, many of whom are either unpaid or poorly paid. With dwindling donor funding and delays in government support, these services are fading.
The overlap between hunger, poverty, and health collapse is no coincidence. It is the product of long years of poor planning, chronic underinvestment, and a political elite that has substituted lofty rhetoric for actual leadership.
We must confront hard truths. How did we arrive at a place where public hospitals resemble empty halls? Why do our most talented nurses choose to bathe elderly patients in Glasgow rather than deliver babies in Gombe? What happened to the National Health Act, which mandates that one per cent of the consolidated revenue be channelled to basic healthcare?
The Tinubu administration, like its predecessors, has introduced sweeping economic reforms. Fuel subsidies have been removed. The naira has been floated. Electricity tariffs are climbing. These steps, we are told, are aimed at economic stability. But an economic recovery that sacrifices the well-being of the poor is a hollow achievement. It is counterproductive to promote fiscal discipline at the cost of nurses walking out and patients dying in silence.
Other African nations have made better choices despite facing similar economic realities. Rwanda has introduced a performance-based pay system that rewards nurses based on measurable outcomes. Ghana recently reviewed nursing salaries upward and introduced a retention allowance to curb mass migration.
Meanwhile, Nigeria clutches its austerity and watches its best caregivers flee. The human cost of this negligence is unforgivable.
During the recent strike, a 43-year-old teacher in Nasarawa reportedly died after being denied treatment at a state hospital. In Lagos, a pregnant woman was turned away from two public hospitals. She eventually gave birth in public, right on the roadside, before help came. These stories barely make the news anymore. But they play out every day in communities across the country.
And still, we expect miracles.
Let it be said without ambiguity. This was not a rebellion by nurses. It was a desperate plea from professionals whose capacity to endure has been stretched thin. If the government wants to stop the haemorrhage, it must do more than issue press releases. It must fix the rot. It must invest in our healthcare system and the people who run it.
This is especially crucial as Nigeria continues to trumpet its intention to achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2030. That goal is pure fantasy unless urgent reforms are made. You cannot achieve UHC when your primary health centres lack running water, electricity, or even paracetamol. You cannot reach it when patients have to crowdfund treatment online, and nurses are applying en masse to relocate.
Health is not a favour. It is a right. It is enshrined in our Constitution. Every strike brings us closer to the moment when even the most dedicated workers give up altogether. When that day comes, there may be no one left to call in an emergency.
What we need now is more than talk. We need bold policy. We need investment in personnel. We need dignity restored to labour. And we need leadership that sees health not as an expense but as an asset.
The true strength of a country is not in its GDP or foreign reserves. It is in how it treats the sick and those who care for them. On that measure, Nigeria is in critical condition.
There is still hope. But only if we act with urgency and honesty.
Lemmy Ughegbe writes from Abuja
