Nigeria’s Health Sector Subjected to “years of neglect by government”: Catholic Archbishop Decries Human Capital Flight

Abuja, 08 May, 2024 / 8:48 PM

The health sector in the West African nation of Nigeria has been subjected to many years of “neglect”, Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama of the country’s Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja has lamented, and faulted the government for not doing much to address human capital flight of medical doctors.

In his homily during a Thanksgiving Mass that Knights of St. John International (KSJI) organized in honor of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, Archbishop Kaigama called upon the Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led government to work towards having Nigerians practising medicine abroad return home.

“When I go to the UK, to the US, in every place I visit, I see Nigerian doctors; I see Nigerian engineers, professors, in all places,” he said, and added, “Somebody told me that if the Nigerian doctors in the UK were to all come back home, their health system would collapse.”

The Nigerian Catholic Archbishop lamented, “Despite all the professional doctors we have across the world our local health system is very poor; nobody wants to take their patients to Nigerian hospitals because of years of neglect by the government.”

“Those who are rich will always fly to the United States or the United Kingdom where they can get better treatments while the poor are left to suffer on account of the poor health system,” he said during the Eucharistic celebration at the Catholic Secretariat Chaplaincy.

According to the Local Ordinary of Abuja Archdiocese since November 2019, “Poor people die on a daily basis because they could not access good and qualitative health care in Nigeria.”

He urged the government to set up an enabling environment that will attract Nigerian-born medical doctors abroad to return home and use their skills for the growth and development of the health sector.

“Imagine if all these doctors were to come back to Nigeria; it will make a lot of difference in our health sector,” he said, and added, “Let's hope that the government of Bola Tinubu will do everything possible to provide the enabling environment to attract doctors to return home.”

“These gifts that God has given us in human resources, let us use it to the growth of our health sector and to help the poor and humanity,” Archbishop Kaigama further said. 

The 65-year-old Catholic Church leader, who started his Episcopal Ministry in April 1995 as Bishop of Nigeria’s Jalingo Diocese also faulted the government for failing to address the plight of the poor in Africa’s most populous nation. 

“Poverty is something we should look at very seriously. Every day, people bombard us with requests for help. We end up carrying the burden that the government should carry. People cannot approach government offices, so they end up coming to the church, to our offices, because we are open,” he said.

The Catholic Church leader highlighted the challenges bedevilling the people of God in Nigeria, saying, “People are hungry. They need to go to the hospital. Some of their legs need to be amputated. They need blood donation. They need this and that and they don’t have, so the Church becomes the last hope for them.”

Archbishop Kaigama called upon the Nigerian government to “make palliatives available for those in need” as one way of addressing poverty in the West African nation.