Nigeria is indisputably Africa’s biggest producer of oil. At the world rating, it is in the top fifteen. It is also the world’s 4th biggest exporter; exporting 2.1 million barrels each day. This background presupposes a nation that is well sitting on wealth.

By this, it is believed that the country’s infrastructural index would rise appreciably. Thus: roads, schools, hospitals and indeed, every social system in the country would be working in perfect conditions.

Almost, always, the people expect the government to improve their living conditions without which the government has failed. Of course, this is obviously the basis of the pact between the Nigeria people and their leaders.

Patients in the hospital

But in sharp contrast, the situation is far from being a reality in the country. From every perspective, there is a failure; failure of the government to achieve the need of building basic infrastructures.

From the East to South, West to North, the roads are in terrible state. Veer off the road infrastructures and go into Education, it is another nightmare. Of course, the four to five months industrial strike embarked on by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is consequent upon the inability of the Federal Government to equip the universities.

Then enter the world of Health and Medical services which forms the crux of the matter for Saturday Vanguard this week. It is indeed more nightmarish.

What more could be said of a country whose health sector has suffered so much neglect? Yet, year after year, billions of Naira are being appropriated to that sector from the budget?

From primary healthcare to secondary, the story remains the same.

You can bet why the rich which is usually found within the corridors of power have shown so much predilection to foreign hospitals that an ordinary headache can make them travel overseas for medical attention.

If Nigerians have forgotten that their  leaders in the First and Second Republics junketed abroad for medical attention, they wouldn’t forget that the 5th Republic heralded a broad vista of medical tourism to India, Germany, China, Dubai, United Kingdom and the United States of America to mention but a few.

If you doubt this, ask former President Olusegun Obasanjo the circumstances surrounding the death of the former First Lady, Stella Obasanjo. Ask also Turia Yar’Adua, former First Lady where former President Umuru Musa Yar’Adua was before his death. Do also ask the sitting President Goodluck Jonathan where the First Lady returned from recently to give thanksgiving.

In a painstaking, stressful move, Saturday Vanguard set out this week to various public health institutions across the country to ascertain their state and levels of service delivery. The outcome of that rigorous exercise is what you are about to read in the next pages.