Transforming health sector

August 1, 2025 by Editorial

• No section of the country should complain of marginalisation within two years of Tinubu administration

Over the years, it has been said that Northern Nigeria, especially the far North, is the least developed part of the country. From the economic sector  to the health, education, housing and even the civil service, all indices point to a region calling for special attention. This must have informed the Tinubu administration’s Health Sector Renewal Investment Blueprint that has impacted more people in the North.

As leaders from the North gathered in Kaduna to review the performance of President Bola Tinubu’s performance in its two years in office earlier this week, officials of government from the region led the charge in defending its equitable distribution of resources. Leaders such as Alhaji Atiku Bagudu who is in charge of economic planning and budgetary matters, Professor Ali Pate of the health and social welfare ministry and Governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, rose stoutly to explain government policies and combat the narrative that the North has been shortchanged.

One area where the government came out shining after presentation of facts was the health sector. It is a well-known fact that maternal health has been neglected in the region for too long. In 154 facilities, obstetric complications are treated free under the Renewed Hope Agenda. Armed with statistics, Professor Pate explained that 74 local government areas in the North had been designated as priority areas, with 500 primary health care centres upgraded.

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One disease largely peculiar to the region is the Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF), resulting from birth complication mostly among pregnant girls. The Federal Government has taken up the responsibility of full treatment, including surgery, with a view to rehabilitating them, thus curing them of being socially ostracised for no fault of theirs.

There is so much more to be done in the North and other parts of the country. This has little to do with this administration as infrastructure, health, education and other sectors have cried for rehabilitation for so long. It will obviously take more than two years or one term of a government to achieve. Leaders at the federal and other tiers of government have to roll up their sleeves, work in coordinated manner to take Nigeria out of the doldrums.

The Tinubu administration has demonstrated good faith in the past two years and needs encouragement from all. Needless ethnic sentiments can only distract and possibly derail the plans that have been laid out by the government. Even those in opposition should just come up with more beautiful and concrete plans, realising that Nigeria is in crisis situation requiring all hands on desk.

What confronts the country today is akin to a nation at war on all fronts. A government that saw the need to bring down the cost of dialysis all over the country, build more than 1,000 primary health care centres, intervene directly in giving livelihood to the vulnerable and is collaborating with the sub nationals in boosting production of pharmaceuticals deserve commendation for coming this far in only two years.

Government has said that its target is health security. We hope it could be achieved substantially within the next two years. It is not a matter of the North or the South. All Nigerians deserve better health coverage through the insurance policy that has remained largely restricted to federal civil servants. Government should work out a policy for other workers in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. Politicising matters of concern to all is not in the national interest.