Once a towering symbol of medical excellence in West Africa, the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan stood as the pride of Western Nigeria and a living legacy of Yoruba achievement. It was a beacon, a place where lives were saved, hope was restored, and the future of African healthcare was shaped. Today, that legacy lies in ruins.
UCH is no longer a hospital in the true sense of the word. It has become a place where hope goes to die, a slaughterhouse masquerading as a medical institution. And I speak not only from observation, but from personal tragedy. My sister and my mother both died in UCH within a space of one year. Their deaths were not merely the result of illness, but of institutional neglect, staff indifference, and a system so broken that it now actively contributes to the death toll it was built to reduce.
My mother did not die of old age. She died because the system failed her in the most brutal and preventable way. A doctor recommended a blood transfusion, we paid for the blood, urgently, as instructed. But for over 72 hours, the blood never came. She died waiting. After her death, we requested a refund for the blood that was never supplied. Instead, we were told to go to the Federal High Court to obtain an affidavit, just to retrieve our own money. They knew we were grieving. It was a deliberate attempt to frustrate us into giving up. What kind of corrupt, heartless system operates like this? One that profits off pain, and counts on the exhaustion of the bereaved to pad its pockets. It’s not just unethical, it’s criminal.
The hospital has collapsed in every functional sense. There are no clean or accessible toilets for patients or caregivers. The few that exist are either locked or utterly unusable, filled with stench, lacking water, and devoid of toilet paper. The sanitation is appalling. The wards are unhygienic. Power and water supply are erratic. Basic medical supplies such as gloves, painkillers, syringes are often unavailable.
Worse still is the creeping corruption. Patients are sent for unnecessary and repetitive laboratory tests, not to improve diagnosis, but to funnel money into private labs linked to insiders. This has become institutionalised, a daily hustle built into the fabric of patient care. It is common practice for patients to pay repeatedly for the same test within days, if not hours, all in the name of protocol.
Staff morale has plummeted. Many of the remaining workers have long given up on hope or compassion. The culture now is one of apathy, cold detachment, and passive aggression. The few health workers who still try are either overwhelmed or burned out by the sheer weight of a system that has failed them and their patients.
This is not just a problem of UCH. It is a reflection of the dangerous failure of our federal structure, a system in which too much power is centralized in Abuja, where health policy is dictated by disconnected bureaucrats and political appointees who never see the hospital floors, yet control the funds and the rules. This version of federalism no longer serves Nigerians. It serves only a privileged few, while the majority suffer in silence or die quietly in forgotten wards.
It is time we asked hard questions. How can any individual claim the title of Chief Medical Director of UCH with pride, when the institution under their watch is little more than a glorified mortuary? How can the Federal Ministry of Health sleep at night, knowing Nigeria’s flagship hospital has become a graveyard of broken infrastructure and lost lives?
This is not just about the present leadership. Many of the former CMDs of UCH must be recalled and investigated. They must be held accountable. They oversaw the gradual decay of an institution and walked away without consequence. Likewise, senior officials in the Federal Ministry of Health, the very architects of our national health policy must face scrutiny. The rot did not begin yesterday, and it did not happen by accident.
To be clear, the current administration may be making efforts to improve healthcare. But those efforts are being sabotaged from within by vested interests who refuse to release their grip on illegal income and personal gain, even when it costs lives. These saboteurs thrive in the chaos, and they must be confronted.
The truth is stark, our healthcare system is not working. UCH, which once stood tall as a flagship of hope, is now a warning sign of everything wrong with our governance. The time for silence is over. If we do not fix this and fast more lives will be lost not to disease, but to dysfunction, corruption, and deliberate neglect.
Nigeria deserves better. UCH deserves better. And every Nigerian rich or poor deserves the right to walk into a hospital and walk out alive.
By Engr. Bola Babarinde, Former Chairman All Progressives Congress, South Africa Chapter.
