Nigeria is not healthy — and that truth goes far beyond hospitals and clinics. We’ve reduced “good health” to simply not being physically sick, while ignoring the mental, emotional, and systemic breakdown happening all around us. Millions of Nigerians wake up every day exhausted, anxious, depressed, and emotionally worn down — yet we call it strength, resilience, or “normal life.” Mental health is barely acknowledged, let alone treated. When people finally break down, we blame individuals instead of asking what kind of society produces this level of collective distress. Our healthcare system doesn’t care — not always because doctors and nurses are heartless, but because the system itself is broken. Overworked professionals, poor infrastructure, corruption, underfunding, and leadership failure have turned care into survival mode. Everyone is just trying to get through the day. If Nigeria were a patient, it wouldn’t be in a regular hospital ward — it would be in the ICU. Multiple organ failure. A failing economy, a collapsed healthcare system, broken education, widespread hunger, poor governance, and a population living in constant stress. Yet somehow, we keep blaming one “organ” at a time while ignoring the full diagnosis. We blame doctors. We blame nurses. We blame individuals. But we refuse to admit that the patient itself is critically ill. Until we address the root causes — leadership failure, systemic neglect, mental health stigma, and the normalization of suffering — no reform will work. You can’t heal a nation that refuses to admit it is sick. This conversation is uncomfortable. It challenges denial. And it asks a hard question: How do you heal a country that refuses to acknowledge its illness?
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