The revelation Tuesday by Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of Federal Teaching Hospitals across the country that hospitals are becoming empty, as health workers seek greener pastures outside Nigeria because of poor remuneration is worrisome. This undesirable Japa syndrome calls for urgent remedial actions from the relevant authorities in order to stem the tide.
The CMDs lamented that the continuous exit of health workers from the country was threatening the nation’s workforce. The CMDs of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Professor Wasiu Adeyemo; University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Jesse Abiodun, and others raised the alarm at the 2025 budget defence session before the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions.
Professor Adeyemo said, “People resign, retire not even retirement, resignation almost every day. Yes, in the next one or two years, we are going to have all our hospitals empty. We need to do something about the remuneration of all the health care workers.
“The government is putting a lot of money into infrastructure, and we are going to have empty hospitals. The major reason people leave is economy. Consultants are earning less than $1,000”.
On the hospital’s 2024 budget performance, he stated that they had a total budget of N19.2 billion out of which personnel has N13.57 billion and a total overhead of N33.2 million.
“In terms of performance and utilisation, total overhead was 100 percent as of December for the total personnel, 91 percent performance but for the capital project, 45 percent. So, outstanding is 55 percent. November and December are released today. We would cover maybe about 85 percent,” he said.
This gory state of affairs in the nation’s health sector is reflective of the dire economic reality which virtually all sectors are contending with. For instance, the education sector is near extinct as it is also bedeviled by brain drain or japa syndrome and incessant and prolonged strike actions by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The agriculture sector is not faring any better as food security is still a mirage in Nigeria with food prices hitting the roof and beyond the affordability of majority of the citizenry. Nigeria’s power sector has remained perpetually epileptic and notoriously recording an unprecedented 12 national grid collapses in 2024 alone.
However, the grim reality of the nation’s health sector is more embarrassing and, in fact, undesirable owing principally to the dictum that health is wealth and a healthy nation is a wealthy nation. This may appear trite but its import and impact cannot be underestimated. No nation can rise above its demographics, which makes it compelling to have a robust health sector, and, by extension, a healthy populace.
In November 2023, media report indicated that no fewer than 51 healthcare workers had left the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in Jabi, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Every department in the hospital was said to be affected by the brain drain. Similarly, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) said it lost 6,000 pharmacists to brain drain within six years.
The brain drain in the health sector has been attributed primarily to poor remuneration, lack of job satisfaction traceable to inadequate, poor and obsolete medical facilities, general insecurity, erratic electricity supply, and government’s unfavourable policies, among others.
Instructively, the federal government has rolled out its plan to turn the brain drain in the health sector to brain gain, using a sustainable approach. The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, disclosed recently that the government has opened up the Nigeria Health Professionals to Nigerians in Diaspora. He said that the platform has provided for proper interfacing, which is yielding desired result.
“For us, we believe that the issue of brain drain can also lead to brain gain. As people go out, they learn new skills, gather more experience, they are able to interact more with the global community, and quite a number of them are willing to bring back those experiences and skills to Nigeria.
“We have organised the Nigerian Health Professionals outside the country into a group under the Nigerian health professionals diaspora platform and we are interfacing with them, some of them are able to contribute through telemedicine, medical mission and some in other respect.
“Again, we have also expanded our ability to train more health professionals, doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists, and pharmacists, such that even when people go out, we have enough to cater for our people”, the minister explained.
Notwithstanding the brain gain module, Blueprint implores the federal government to act swiftly to arrest the brain drain of health workers from the nation’s hospitals. The government should implement the April 2001 Abuja Declaration whereby member states of the African Union (AU) committed to allocating 15 percent of their government budgets to health. It is also expedient to advise the authorities of health institutions to be prudent and accountable in the spending of budgetary allocations to their respective agencies.