We now face a stark and very distressing reality – Nigeria’s nurses are on strike. For seven days, the nation’s healthcare system has been thrown into panic, not because nurses are wicked or unpatriotic, but because they are wounded. And when the wounded healers can no longer endure, everyone suffers.
The question is not whether the nurses have a right to protest. That is clear. The real question is: who bears the cost when nurses drop their tools?
Let’s start with the most vulnerable. In many government hospitals across the country—from Ibadan to Kano, Onitsha to Abuja—patients have borne the brunt of nurses temporarily stopping their work in the hospitals. Elderly mothers battling hypertension, children gasping from asthma attacks, women in labour, and road accident victims—these are the ones paying the price. Not in dollars or naira, but in pain, delay, and sometimes, death.
The nurses say they are tired of working triple shifts with no adequate pay. They are asking for better uniforms, risk allowances, promotions, proper recognition of their professional status, and for a voice in how healthcare is managed. These are not outrageous demands. They are basic expectations in any civilized country. Yet in Nigeria, these cries have been ignored for years and now the silence has became unbearable.
It is easy for government spokespeople to go on TV and ask the nurses to “show patriotism” and return to work. But patriotism is a two-way street. You cannot ask people to keep sacrificing for a nation that does not even acknowledge their worth. It is not patriotic to remain silent in the face of injustice. In fact, it is this silence that has brought Nigeria’s healthcare system to its knees. Who pays when nurses drop their tools? Nigeria does. The sick do. The poor who cannot afford private clinics do.
If anything, this moment should force a national reflection. We cannot continue to build a country where the best hands are fleeing abroad, and those who remain are treated like second-class citizens. Over 42,000 Nigerian nurses have left the country in the last three years. If this strike is ignored, how many more will go?
Our leaders must act now—not with empty press statements, but with action. It is time to fix the salary structure. Time to recruit more nurses. Time to listen.
Let us not wait until the hospitals are empty and the cemeteries full before we realize how important nurses are. Because when they drop their tools, disaster strikes. One we cannot afford to ignore.
