In Nigeria, death doesn’t always knock before entering. Sometimes it drifts quietly through the hospital gate, collects a card, is told to “wait small,” and sits down like it belongs. Sometimes, it wears a white coat.
From the cracked walls of rural clinics to the marble-floored corridors of private hospitals, Nigerians are dying—not always from the illnesses that brought them in, but from the hands that were supposed to save them.
The real tragedy isn’t death itself—it’s how many of these deaths are completely preventable. How careless. How routine. How easily swept away along with a patient’s file.
Not long ago, the death of a prominent writer’s son shook the nation. This was no poverty-stricken household, no case of ignorance. This was a child born into education, access, and influence—yet he died in a Lagos hospital under circumstances that raised grim, unavoidable questions.
Was the diagnosis rushed? Was monitoring lax? Were warning signs ignored because someone was tired, distracted, or unprofessional? Nigerians watched, mourned, and recognized the story—not just as tragedy, but as reality.
In Kano, a young mother underwent surgery and never stopped complaining of pain afterward. Each visit back ended the same way: reassurance, dismissal, painkillers. “You worry too much,” she was told. Months later, she collapsed. Scans revealed surgical scissors had been left inside her abdomen. Negligence stitched shut. She died while doctors tried to fix a mistake that should never have happened.
In Ado-Ekiti, a man survived a road accident and was taken to a teaching hospital alive. Doctors said one kidney was damaged. Consent was given. After surgery, he woke to find both kidneys removed. No explanation. No accountability. A life now defined by dialysis and public pleas, all because a single decision went wrong.
These are not isolated tragedies. They form a pattern: patients turned away for unpaid deposits, accident victims left bleeding while forms are filled, babies dying when power fails, women hemorrhaging because junior staff “wait for instructions,” men collapsing in corridors because the consultant is absent.
Nigeria has perfected the language of medical excuses: “The doctor has travelled.” “The lab result isn’t ready.” “The machine is faulty.” “Bring money first.” Unprofessionalism is routine.
Overworked doctors cut corners. Undertrained practitioners guess. Nurses play God. Pharmacists swap medications without explanation. And when death comes, “complications” are written neatly on a chart, stamped like a final dismissal.
Autopsies are rare. Investigations are rarer.
Consequences almost never arrive. Families are too poor, too exhausted, too afraid to fight a system that protects itself. They bury their dead—and their questions—together.
Those who can afford it flee abroad. Medical tourism has become a survival strategy. The poor, the middle class, and even the influential who cannot escape gamble with fate at home.
The bitter truth: Nigeria has brilliant doctors, minds and hearts capable of world-class care—but they are trapped in a system that rewards negligence and punishes excellence.
Regulation is weak. Oversight compromised. Professional bodies often defend colleagues instead of patients.
So Nigerians keep dying. From wrong prescriptions. From delayed diagnoses. From infections picked up inside hospitals. From errors nobody double-checked. From care nobody took seriously.
Each death follows the same pattern: outrage, hashtags, tears, silence—until the next victim.
The death of that writer’s son should haunt us, not trend. If a child born into influence can be lost this way, what hope does the market woman have? The bus driver? The student? The farmer and poor masses in the rural area of the country ?
A nation that cannot protect its people in hospitals is a nation quietly at war with itself. Until Nigeria confronts the rot in its healthcare system—negligence, unprofessionalism, weak oversight, and official indifference—the white coat will continue to cast a long, deadly shadow.
Mogaji Wole Arisekola, Publisher of The Street Journal, writes from Ibadan.
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