In a startling revelation, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, announced that more than 16000 doctors have emigrated from the country over the past seven years.
The Minister said the mass exodus has left Nigeria’s healthcare system grappling with a severe shortage of medical professionals.
Speaking at the seventh annual capacity-building workshop of the Association of Medical Councils of Africa in Abuja, Prof. Pate highlighted the scale of the crisis.
He noted that the doctor-to-population ratio in Nigeria has plummeted to just 3.9 per 10,000. He said this is below the World Health Organization’s recommended standard of one doctor per 1,000 people.
The primary drivers of this migration, according to Pate, include better economic prospects, improved working conditions, advanced training opportunities, and access to cutting-edge research environments abroad.
According to him, these factors have lured Nigeria’s brightest medical talents to countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
He asserted: “In Nigeria alone, over 16000 doctors are estimated to have left the country in the last five to seven years, with thousands more leaving in just the past few years. Nurses and midwives have also thinned in numbers. The doctor-to-population ratio now stands at around 3.9 per 10,000—well below the suggested global minimum.
“But this trend is not just about people leaving. It represents a fiscal loss. The estimated cost of training one doctor exceeds $21,000—a figure that reflects the magnitude of public financing walking out of our countries. It deeply affects our health systems—leaving many of our rural communities critically underserved.”
He, however, emphasised that the phenomenon offers an opportunity to rethink and reshape the policies, to manage the valuable health workforce in ways that benefit our countries first and foremost.
“In Nigeria, guided by the vision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who African Heads of State appointed as the AU’s Continental Champion for Human Resources for Health and Community Health Delivery, we are pursuing a new direction. His vision is for Nigeria to become a prosperous, people-oriented country that contributes to a peaceful and thriving continent. Not a standalone Nigeria, but a Nigeria that is interlinked with all our neighbours and sister countries. Under the Renewed Hope Agenda, and within the framework of the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, we have embraced a new path—combining strategic realism with visionary ambition.
“The National Policy on Health Workforce Migration is a cornerstone of this path. It is designed to address health workforce migration with dignity—dignity for health workers, for the country, and for the profession. It is data-driven, evidence-guided, and signals a clear direction. This is not a restrictive policy, nor is it one born out of resignation. We understand that the global health workforce shortage is at 18 million, and countries in the Global North face human resource crises due to demographics and other factors. But our response is based on stewardship—balancing the rights of health professionals to seek opportunities abroad with our duty to protect the integrity and viability of our national health system.
“The objectives are clear – To retain and motivate health workers currently serving in Nigeria—thousands of whom work under difficult conditions; to establish ethical norms and explore bilateral frameworks for recruitment, aiming to correct global asymmetries; to expand training capacity—not only for domestic needs, but to contribute to global workforce needs, to enable structured reintegration for the thousands of Nigerian professionals abroad; and to strengthen governance, improve regulatory coordination, and build real-time data systems.”
