One thing that used to annoy me whenever people talked about Nigerian hospitals was how quickly everybody blamed the doctors and nurses. I used to do it too. Anytime I heard stories of hospitals demanding payment before treatment, I would get angry immediately. To me, it sounded wicked.
How do you see somebody struggling to breathe or carrying a loved one in critical condition and your first response is, “Go and pay at the counter”?
But as I got older and started hearing real stories from both patients and medical workers, I realized the issue is not as black and white as people make it seem.
In the bustling corridors of Nigerian hospitals, the phrase “Go and pay at the counter” has become more than just a cynical remark. It has become a lived reality. Patients arrive desperate for help, battling fevers, accidents and sudden emergencies.
Yet before a doctor’s stethoscope touches their skin, a cashier’s receipt is often expected first. Payment before treatment has quietly become an unwritten law, and for many Nigerians, it feels like life itself is being held hostage by money.
I remember a personal experience that changed how I saw it. I was rushed to a government hospital during an emergency, obviously in excruciating pain, expecting immediate attention.
Instead, we were asked to make a deposit first. At that moment, everything felt unfair. People in the waiting area were frustrated, some openly complaining that Nigerian doctors don’t care anymore, that everything is about money.
Honestly, I agreed with them in that moment.
But while waiting, I started observing more carefully. The hospital itself looked exhausted. ugly looking chairs, overworked staff, and patients scattered everywhere.
The nurses weren’t necessarily cold, they just looked drained. A doctor moved from ward to ward without pause, like rest was a luxury he couldn’t afford. The entire system looked like something stretched far beyond its limits.
When I eventually got admitted into the ward, I overheard a conversation between two nurses. One spoke about unpaid salaries and how transportation alone was becoming unbearable. Another mentioned inflation eating into whatever little they earned. That was when my anger started to shift into something more complicated.
The truth is, the roots of this problem go far beyond the hospital walls. The Nigerian healthcare system has suffered years of neglect. Government funding is inadequate, equipment is outdated, drugs are often unavailable, and salaries are delayed in many cases. Health insurance exists in theory for most people, but in reality, many Nigerians still pay out-of-pocket before receiving care.
In such a broken system, hospitals gradually begin to function like survival-driven institutions. Not because it is ideal, but because it is necessary to keep the doors open.
And yet, it would also be dishonest to ignore the pain this causes patients. Emergencies do not wait for receipts. Even, when mine was ongoing, I felt like any further delay and I would have gone to meet my ancestors. There are moments where delays tied to payment lead to irreversible outcomes, and those stories stay with people forever.
At the same time, doctors and nurses are not outside this struggle. Many of them have families to feed, rent to pay, and responsibilities that do not pause because they work in healthcare. Some are underpaid and overworked. Others are leaving the country entirely because the system gives them little room to survive, let alone thrive.
One of the young doctors I met while there said something that stayed with me: “We are not heartless bro. But compassion alone cannot keep the hospital running.”
That sentence captures the tension perfectly.
So, when people say Nigerian doctors are “in for the money,” I understand the frustration behind it, but I also see how incomplete that statement is. Money has become the gatekeeper to care, yes. But many of the people inside the system are also trapped by the same reality.
At the end of it all, it is not just about doctors or patients. It is about a system that has failed both sides, leaving survival and compassion constantly in conflict.
At the end of the day, I don’t think most of them entered medicine “for the money.” I think many of them simply got trapped in a country where compassion alone is no longer enough to survive.
Images Credit - Chatgpt
