A Chronicle of When Darkness Fell on UCH Ibadan

By 06 February 2025, the University College Hospital in Ibadan had been in a blackout for 97 days. ‘Surgeries are on hold. Patients are dying. And in the best teaching hospital in Nigeria, it is just another Thursday,’ John Eriomala, a medical student, reported from the dark. 

When I sat down to write the very first paragraph of this story, I couldn’t have imagined that it would take over 100 days before the hum of electricity returned to what should be the paragon of medical excellence in Nigeria, the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan. I did not envisage the crisis in healthcare delivery and the decline in the living conditions of medical students on the premises. I surely did not think it would conclude with a showdown of protests on the streets of Ibadan. But over the course of three months, I witnessed all these. I witnessed even more. And I can tell you one thing or several things, depending on how willing you are to read about causatives of the Japa syndrome as observed in real-time or the thinning threads of medical education in Nigeria or the pain in the eyes of patients.  

 This is not an extreme retelling. The blackout in UCH was just that terrible...

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