WHEN HEALTHCARE BETRAYS A PEOPLE: A LATE WAKE-UP CALL, BUT A NECESSARY ONE

 WHEN HEALTHCARE BETRAYS A PEOPLE: A LATE WAKE-UP CALL, BUT A NECESSARY ONE

By Tijjani Sarki 

I write this with deep pain and patriotic anger, not as an outsider, but as a citizen who has walked through many public health facilities across Kano State. Each visit left me heavier than the last. The story is ugly, repetitive, and humiliating. One facility after another tells the same tale of neglect, forcing me to ask,are we truly serious about the lives of our people?

What I saw disturbed me deeply. Broken or nonexistent equipment, careless handling of patients, poor documentation, weak infection prevention, and an alarming absence of compassion. In many places, ethics have collapsed, professionalism has faded, humanity is missing, and patriotism appears to have died within hospital walls.

As such there are no innocent parties.

I indict health workers who have reduced care to routine indifference, forgetting that behind every case file is a human life. I indict patients too not for their poverty or desperation but for accepting disorder as normal, sometimes even sustaining corruption just to survive a broken system. I indict community members who witness decay daily but choose silence over collective outrage. I indict health administrators who manage hospitals like abandoned warehouses, lacking supervision, leadership, and moral responsibility. Above all, I indict the government, which for years has treated healthcare as an afterthought reacting only after damage has been done.

This failure is even more painful when one considers that huge sums are budgeted annually for healthcare, and that we possess health personnel who are largely well trained, though admittedly insufficient in number. Yet, despite funding on paper and training in theory, service delivery remains shamefully poor. I have raised these concerns repeatedly in my previous articles on the health sector, and more formally in a memo I submitted to the Committee on the Revival of Health Facilities 14th may,2025. Regrettably, that committee appears to have joined its ancestors in the archives,buried in paperwork, forgotten in action, and absent in impact.

It is against this troubling background that the recent action by the Kano State Hospitals Management Board, under the leadership of Dr. Mansur Mudi Nagoda, must be viewed. To me, it feels like a late realisation but silence would have been far worse.

Dr. Nagoda’s directive to Chief Medical Directors and Zonal Directors to ensure immediate compliance with minimum clinical and operational standards is not a call for miracles. It is a demand for the basics:

 Functional equipment at service points, visible and updated Standard Operating Procedures in theatres, proper medical records, strict infection prevention and control, and respect for patient rights through documented informed consent.

These are not luxuries. They are obligations. The tragedy is that such fundamentals now require stern warnings and threats of disciplinary action. That alone exposes the depth of decay within the system.

Still, as someone who loves Kano and believes in the promise of Nigeria, I say this clearly better late than never. This intervention is a necessary interruption to a culture of neglect that has thrived for too long. It is a reminder that public office is a sacred trust, and that healthcare is not a favour,it is a right.

However, one directive will not resurrect a dying system. If this effort ends at words, it will become yet another insult to suffering citizens. Enforcement must be firm, consistent, and free of favoritism. Health workers must rediscover conscience and professionalism. Communities must stop normalising failure. Administrators must be held accountable. The government must finally place human life above politics, excuses, and press statements.

Healthcare failure is not merely an administrative lapse,it is a moral collapse. When hospitals lose their soul, society itself becomes sick. I hope this action marks the beginning of genuine reform, not another forgotten announcement. Our people deserve dignity in sickness and care in vulnerability. Anything less is a betrayal of our shared humanity.

Tijjani Sarki

Good Governance Advocate and Public Policy Analyst

23rd January, 2026