For nearly a decade, the numbers have quietly told a devastating story about the state of healthcare in Nigeria. Behind every percentage point and every unfulfilled appropriation lies a reality of overstretched hospitals, abandoned projects, unpaid contractors, and patients left to fend for themselves.
Between 2016 and 2025, capital allocations to the health sector fluctuated wildly — but what is more troubling is not what was budgeted. It is what was actually released.
In 2016, ₦28.7 billion was appropriated for capital projects in health. Only ₦15.2 billion — 53 percent — was released. In 2017, ₦51.3 billion was budgeted; ₦33.3 billion was released. In 2018, ₦71.1 billion shrank to ₦42.6 billion in actual utilization.
The pattern continued. In 2019, just 55 percent of the ₦46.5 billion allocation was released. In 2020, it dropped to 50 percent. Even in 2021, when ₦134 billion was appropriated, only 70 percent was utilized — a rare high point in an otherwise troubling trajectory.
Then came the steep decline.
In 2022, despite ₦194 billion being allocated to capital health projects, only ₦87.3 billion — 45 percent — was released. In 2023, the release rate fell further to 30 percent.
By 2024, the situation became even more alarming. Of the ₦434.8 billion originally budgeted, only ₦65.4 billion was released — a mere 15.06 percent.
But 2025 presents perhaps the most heartbreaking figure of all.
Out of ₦218 billion appropriated for health capital projects, only ₦36 million has reportedly been released — translating to just 0.0165 percent.
To put it plainly, that means nearly the entire health capital budget remains untouched while hospitals across the country struggle with broken equipment, unfinished buildings, power shortages, and a mass exodus of medical professionals seeking better opportunities abroad.
Under the current administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, expectations were high that critical sectors like health would receive stronger financial backing amid rising inflation, currency instability, and deepening public hardship. Instead, the data paints a picture of widening gaps between promise and execution.
Capital funding is not about salaries or overhead. It is about infrastructure — new hospitals, upgraded laboratories, modern diagnostic machines, rural health centres, maternal wards, and emergency facilities. When capital releases collapse, development stalls. Projects are abandoned. Communities wait. Patients suffer.
In rural Nigeria, it means women giving birth without proper facilities. In urban centres, it means overcrowded teaching hospitals and malfunctioning diagnostic equipment. For young doctors and nurses, it reinforces the painful decision to leave the country.
Over ten years, billions have been announced in budgets. But billions have not translated into hospitals built, wards equipped, or lives saved.
The numbers are not just statistics. They are silent testimonies to a health system gasping for support — and to citizens who continue to pay the price.
