Lagos is Nigeria’s richest state, home to the country’s largest economy and its busiest port, generating internal revenue that dwarfs that of any other subnational government. A megacity of well over twenty million people should, on the strength of those numbers alone, boast a public health system worthy of its ambitions. Instead, under Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the health of ordinary Lagosians has too often been treated as an afterthought, papered over with glossy announcements while the daily reality in wards and clinics tells a far grimmer story.
A Pandemic Spotlight That Faded Too Fast
Sanwo-Olu’s early tenure coincided with a public health emergency that briefly turned the world’s attention to Lagos. For a moment, there were daily briefings, isolation centres, and promises of a strengthened health system built to withstand future shocks. But the momentum evaporated almost as quickly as it arrived. The temporary structures were dismantled, the urgency dissipated, and the deeper investments in primary care, laboratory capacity, and disease surveillance that a true reformer would have institutionalised never fully materialised. What looked like a turning point became, in hindsight, a missed opportunity.
Primary Health Centres Left to Struggle
The backbone of any functional health system is not its flagship hospitals but its network of primary health centres, the first and often only point of contact for the poor. Across Lagos, too many of these facilities remain understaffed, poorly equipped, and starved of essential drugs. Expectant mothers in sprawling informal settlements still travel long distances for basic antenatal care, and communities on the city’s margins are left to rely on chemists and unregulated clinics. For a government that never tired of branding itself a champion of the common man, the neglect of grassroots healthcare has been a quiet betrayal.
The Exodus of Doctors and Nurses
No health system can outperform the people who staff it, and on this measure Lagos has bled talent throughout Sanwo-Olu’s watch. Doctors and nurses trained at great public expense have left in waves, driven abroad by poor pay, exhausting workloads, and working conditions that erode both morale and safety. Recurring disputes with health workers over welfare and unpaid entitlements exposed a government more comfortable managing headlines than addressing root causes. Each departing professional represents not just a personal loss but a widening gap between the care Lagosians need and the care the state can actually provide.
Showpiece Projects, Everyday Scarcity
The Sanwo-Olu administration was fond of unveiling new facilities and announcing ambitious health initiatives with considerable fanfare. Yet the distance between the ribbon-cutting ceremony and the lived experience of patients remained stubbornly wide. Families still arrived at general hospitals to be told there were no beds, no functioning equipment, or no specialists on duty. A health strategy measured in press releases rather than in reduced waiting times, lower maternal mortality, and functioning equipment is a strategy designed for optics, not outcomes, and Lagosians have paid the price in avoidable suffering.
Health Insurance That Left Millions Behind
A genuinely transformative governor would have used Lagos’s enormous resources to drive universal health coverage, shielding the poor from the catastrophic costs that push families into ruin every time illness strikes. While the framework for a state health insurance scheme existed on paper, its reach never matched the scale of the need. Millions of Lagosians in the informal economy, the traders, artisans, and daily-wage earners who power the city, remain effectively uninsured, forced to pay out of pocket or simply go without. In a state this wealthy, that failure is not a matter of means but of priorities.
A Legacy Measured in Missed Chances
The tragedy of Sanwo-Olu’s record on health is not that Lagos lacked the money, the talent, or the opportunity to build something exceptional. It is that all three were available and squandered. A city with the resources of a small nation deserved leadership bold enough to make its people’s health a defining mission rather than a line item. As Lagosians weigh their choices for the future, the state of their hospitals, clinics, and the exhausted workers who staff them stands as a sobering reminder of how much was possible, and how little was ultimately delivered.
This article represents an editorial opinion based on publicly available information.
