By Bagudu Mohammed
It’s one of the most curious ironies of our time: while many Nigerians bemoan the supposed decline in educational standards, the world can’t seem to get enough of Nigerian health workers. From London to Riyadh, New York to Toronto, they are in scrubs, commanding respect, saving lives, and quietly rewriting the global narrative about the quality of Nigerian education.
Yes, we hear it all the time—our elders lament the good old days when education “meant something.” They scoff at the new generation, claiming today’s graduates struggle to write proper sentences, let alone defend their certificates. The stories of exam malpractice, mercenary teachers, and schools that “sell” results have only made this sentiment stronger. And disturbingly, this culture of cheating is no longer just whispered about—it’s sometimes even encouraged by parents and institutionalized in some expensive private schools that chase bragging rights for their students’ results, or public schools pressured to meet performance targets.
Yet, in the midst of this supposed chaos, a paradox refuses to go away: Nigerian-trained doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and medical technologists are thriving abroad—thriving so well, in fact, that “Japa” has become a national sport. Our leaders still fly abroad for medical care, yes, but there’s a growing joke that even there, they’re probably being treated by Nigerian doctors.
So what’s really going on? How can a system thought to be broken produce professionals who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in the world?
The answer, as with many things Nigerian, lies in the details. Gaining admission into Nigerian medical schools, pharmaceutical sciences and school of health are nothing short of a battlefield. With over 1.8 million candidates writing UTME annually, and only about 30% securing admission, getting into a university is hard enough. But medicine, pharmacy, nursing? That’s a war of attrition. Only a handful make it in, often those scoring well over 300 in UTME, and even they are sometimes edged out by competition within their state’s catchment quota. You’ll hear stories of candidates scoring 369 but missing admission into medicine because someone from the same state scored 370. That’s how tight the race is.
The point is this: anyone who gains admission to study medicine, pharmacy, nursing, or any of the health sciences in Nigeria didn’t just fall in—they fought their way in. And those who didn’t quite make the cut often fall back to equally tough courses like biochemistry, microbiology, anatomy, physiology, and still graduate with first-class honors. As my wife, an academic, once told me: “Most of the first-class graduates in sciences were originally medicine hopefuls.”
So despite poor infrastructure, outdated equipment, and overpopulated lecture halls, the sheer level of competition ensures that only the most gifted make it through. Nigerian students learn to improvise. They dissect with blunt instruments, study under candlelight or with flashlights, and diagnose with limited tools. But that struggle breeds a kind of brilliance. It sharpens instincts, deepens knowledge, and creates a breed of professionals who—once exposed to advanced equipment and better environments abroad—hit the ground running. Like a craftsman who learned to carve with a machete suddenly handed a scalpel, the result is often extraordinary.
This is why Nigerian health workers don’t just survive abroad—they excel. They are adaptable. They’re used to making something out of nothing. A Nigerian doctor trained in malaria-endemic, low-resource settings enters a European hospital with not just textbook knowledge, but real-world resilience. In Saudi Arabia, I recall how Nigerian-run clinics were the only reliable places for malaria treatment—because the local doctors had never even seen the disease before.
Now contrast that with someone who trains exclusively abroad and returns home to practice. They often struggle to adjust to the peculiarities of the Nigerian medical landscape—conditions they never encountered, facilities they never imagined could be so limited. It’s ironic, but a doctor trained in adversity is sometimes better prepared for the world than one trained in luxury.
Of course, the conversation shouldn’t stop at health workers. Other professionals—engineers, IT specialists, data analysts—are also in demand globally. But because medicine, pharmacy and other health sciences require internships, locum jobs, and hands-on exposure, it prepares its students in a more practical way. In contrast, mechanical engineering students in Nigeria may graduate without ever having touched a car engine or operated a machine. So while both groups have potential, health workers are more immediately deployable on the global stage.
There’s also a broader point to be made about how we rank courses in Nigeria. Medicine is worshipped. Education degrees? Not so much. We reserve the “easiest” courses for the students with the lowest scores, then turn around and complain about the poor quality of our teachers and administrators. We believe the most intelligent should become doctors, and we forget that without great teachers, there would be no doctors. No engineers. No society.
It’s a deeply flawed perception, and it’s hurting us. Even within medicine, brilliance doesn’t always translate into good leadership or sound judgment. Some of our brightest minds have failed in governance, and many who shone in school have stumbled in the real world.
Still, it’s clear that Nigerian health workers are exceptional not by accident, but by design. The hurdles they face at home—limited slots, fierce competition, under-resourced schools—are the very fires that forge their excellence. They are survivors, innovators, and global game-changers, shaped by a tough system, but tougher for it.
So next time someone tells you Nigerian education has collapsed, remind them: it may be struggling, but it still produces giants.
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