Nigeria likes to boast that “we don’t carry final.” However relating to life expectancy, we aren’t simply carrying final, we’re digging our personal grave. At 64 years, Nigeria sits disgracefully on the all-time low of Africa’s life expectancy tables, rubbing shoulders with war-torn South Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic. For a rustic with billions in oil and entrepreneurial brilliance, this isn’t dangerous luck. It’s a coverage failure of the best order.
That is the silent disaster no one in Abuja needs to speak about. The worldwide common life expectancy is 73 years. Nigerians are dying practically 20 years sooner than the remainder of the world. That’s worse than any credit score downgrade, worse than any GDP droop. It’s the final humiliation: a nation the place life itself has develop into tragically low-cost.
The drivers will not be mysteries. Moms and kids are dying in numbers that ought to disgrace any severe authorities. UNICEF stories that 102 youngsters die for each 1,000 reside births in Nigeria: 4 instances the worldwide goal. Maternal mortality stands at a catastrophic 1,047 deaths per 100,000 births, among the many worst on earth. In too many villages, households bury extra youngsters than they identify. These will not be simply well being statistics; they’re the proof of a state that has deserted its most elementary obligation: conserving its folks alive.
However Nigeria just isn’t cursed. Different African nations, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, and Botswana, have confirmed that deliberate coverage can save lives. Ethiopia deployed well being extension employees into each neighborhood and reduce little one and maternal deaths dramatically. Ghana’s free maternal healthcare coverage put expert start attendants into hospitals and decreased maternal deaths. Botswana turned an HIV dying sentence right into a survivable situation by means of mass antiretroviral rollout. These will not be experiments; they’re proof that management issues.
Nigeria has programmes on paper, the Fundamental Healthcare Provision Fund, the Nationwide Well being Insurance coverage Authority, malaria interventions, and maternal and new child initiatives. But the outcomes stay pitiful. Within the final 5 years, whereas international maternal mortality declined by 40 %, Nigeria managed solely a 13 % enchancment. That hole is the price of incompetence, corruption, and criminally gradual implementation. Funds vanish between the Federal Ministry of Well being, the Nationwide Major Well being Care Improvement Company, and state ministries. Governors favor to construct self-importance tasks relatively than major well being centres. Native governments, constitutionally tasked with fundamental healthcare, barely operate. The end result: Nigerians are dying younger, not due to destiny, however as a result of establishments are failing them.
This is the reason this editorial piece insists: Nigeria’s life expectancy disaster have to be handled with wartime urgency. Well being have to be elevated to the extent of a nationwide safety emergency. Meaning:
Free, assured maternal and new child care: no mom ought to die as a result of she can’t pay.
A nationwide surge in malaria management: common insecticidal internet protection and accessible therapy.
Declaring malnutrition a nationwide emergency, backed by measurable intervention targets.
Clear, state-by-state healthcare scorecards so Nigerians can see which governors, commissioners, and establishments are failing them.
The cash exists. The Fundamental Healthcare Provision Fund was designed to ensure a minimum of 1 % of the Consolidated Income Fund for major healthcare, but implementation is gradual and opaque. Billions are mismanaged, wasted, or stolen whereas youngsters rot in malnourished graves. The price of motion is excessive, however the price of inaction is the shortened life of each Nigerian.
Life expectancy just isn’t future; it’s a alternative. Nigeria has chosen badly for many years, and the result’s that tens of millions by no means reside to see outdated age. If leaders can’t be shamed by these numbers, they need to a minimum of be terrified: no economic system can thrive when its folks die earlier than 55. No nation can compete globally whereas bleeding out its human capital in supply rooms and kids’s wards.
The query is blunt: will the Federal Ministry of Well being, NPHCDA, and Nigeria’s 36 governors proceed to bury their folks younger, or will they lastly resolve that essentially the most fundamental measure of progress is conserving residents alive?
The clock is ticking, not in election cycles, however in lives misplaced tomorrow.
