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When Darkness Fell on UCH Ibadan

February/March 2025Nigeria
UCH Ibadan

Collage by THE REPUBLIC. Photo provided by the Author. 

THE MINISTRY OF SCIENCE

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.
UCH Ibadan

Collage by THE REPUBLIC. Photo provided by the Author. 

THE MINISTRY OF SCIENCE

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.  

1 NOVEMBER 2024

I type this from the floor of a changing room. With me are four other students; with me in person, as there are a host of others, spiritually present in the five extension boxes that crisscross in a sad imitation of an anastomosis. Twenty-four minutes after I began charging, the generator powering the theatre goes off, and now I must change my location. There has been no power for six days. Surgeries are on hold. Patients are dying. And in the best teaching hospital in Nigeria, it is just another Saturday.  

Four days ago, a professor told a section of my class that they could not compete with students at Harvard University. He said it was down to knowledge and how we are not reading well enough, or even at all. I agree with him on the extent to which some of us read. After all, I fall into the ‘Duncan category’ (The Duncan line is a term that means 50, so-called after an urban legend of a medical student called Duncan who always got grades within the range of 50 and subsequently graduated. In Nigerian medical schools, there are only three grades; fail (score below 50), pass (score 50 and above), and distinction (score at least 70 in most schools; 80 in the University of Ibadan)). But I disagree that we, Duncanians, are the majority. Our results bear me witness. Students would read so much better if we didn’t face such hellish conditions; like me, now typing in a semi-abandoned ward in the east segment of Nigeria’s foremost medical institution. This school admits the supposed nation’s smartest—highly driven boys and girls from the 99th percentile of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), West African Examinations Council, National Examination Council, A’ levels, and any valid qualifying examination in the country. If thereafter, the majority appear to be losing their verve, then it isn’t a result of laziness. There has to be more.  

The boys and girls from Harvard have never had to fetch water in pale, icteric, 25-litre kegs. They do not know the joy of developing lower back pain from water power-lifting; no medals, by the way. The prize is your presence at lectures, clinics or ward rounds. Those fighters in the ‘US of A’ know not what it is to obtain water from a construction site. ‘Pass me your small bucket, abeg.’ Someone passes it. You fill the bucket. Proceed to fill your keg. You’re one of the fortunate ones in a hall of over a thousand. But sure, they globally out-pace you majorly for that reason.  

This is not the first power outage for such a period. The previous instance was in August. If this were a clinical scenario, and we had to assess the patient—aged, ailing Alexander Brown Hall (ABH)—we’d clerk this way: Presenting complaint? Lack of electricity for one week. History of presenting complaint? The hall was in her usual state of poor health until sorrow. We-could-have-sworn-we-saw-it-coming in onset. Constant. Progressively worsening. Aggravated by our existence as clinical students. Relieved by Fanawole—one of two major cafeterias in the Hall whose generator comes on for two hours daily—seminar rooms, the Emergency Department, the library, and in some cases, the University of Ibadan (UI) about 20-30 minutes away. Yes, students have been shuttling to-and-from UI. No, not just for a day or two. Associated symptoms include dirty clothes and ward coats, inability to study, work, or eat, see-finish secondary to being chased away from wards, and pain. Family and social history? Her counterparts on the main campus have never had it this bad. We’ll clerk the pain later—or never.  

The inverter in the ward has been switched on so now it’s time to charge. My expertise in extension box hauling has improved significantly in the last few months. Soon enough, all my devices are plugged in. A wave of hunger hits. But I can’t go back to get food at the moment because: one, I’m broke. Two, A spoonful of white amala, my preferred meal, is now ₦200. Three, snacks have gotten equally expensive with reduced utility.  

Another topic that came up during the lecture was the japa wave. Supposedly, what makes this exodus different from those before—the aforementioned professor’s stay in the United States included—is that the new wave of emigrants sever all ties. A classmate of mine agrees. He says it’s unpatriotic of us to be trained for ‘cheap’ and leave, and even worse that we denounce the nation altogether. The professor says foreigners won’t trust immigrants so willing to become aliens. My classmate says it’s a weakness in our thought processes. I think of both while a house officer—fresh out of almost a decade’s worth of studying Medicine—walks in. ‘Is there any free space?’ This not-so-young man also moves about with an extension box in his bag. I understand why he might want to sever all ties, wrong as it is. Or denounce a nation that won’t pay him well enough. That these other countries we keep running to got better because their citizens didn’t leave is inaccurate. And so is the notion that countries like China (which my lecturer mentions repeatedly, and which had citizens mass-emigrating to return decades later) flourished for that singular reason. Policies ensured that mass emigration yielded profits and actionable plans. The same can’t be said for Nigeria. 

On a better day, I might explore the point beyond surface semantics. I’d opt for facts and throw in a figure or two, accepting the more peculiar concoctions of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. But like I said, I haven’t eaten, I’m broke, and this might be the only opportunity to charge today. I’ll research more later.  

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30 DECEMBER 2024

I type from the comfort of a three-bedroom bungalow somewhere in Ogun State, over 150km away from UI. There has been no light at UCH for over 50 days—the product of an accumulated debt of about half a billion Naira—and my arrival home feels like more than a holiday. This is Buddha’s Nirvana. This is the Pilgrim’s Heaven. I have the assurance of a minimum of six hours of electricity per day. Last night, I served myself a plate of food that would have cost me four meals in school. Three days ago, a revered Nigerian poet took to X to share his frustrations. He had spent the better part of the day scouring for anti-venom for a snake bite. Thirteen hospitals, including UCH, presented empty palms. He’s angered that he had to buy the gloves and materials the doctors and nurses used. He’s saddened by the wailings of families around who, from their reactions, have lost loved ones. He has lived the life of a medical practitioner in that institution for half a day, and he doesn’t even realize it.  

The story of his friend, writhing in pain and unable to receive medical care, is the story of thousands here. Regression reigns. Patients can’t undergo life-saving procedures. Referrals to other hospitals for X-rays and other investigations hold sway. On the corridors, at the Accident and Emergency ward, you find relatives, co-workers, the occasional trio of strangers, plotting the next course of action to save a soul. An emergency chest tube insertion is delayed as there’s no power, the ward is dark, and the blood bank isn’t operating optimally. The following day, your distraught senior registrar tells you of the patient’s passing. No one seems to care enough to save these lives by giving us power.  

For the first time since my admission into UI, I’m apprehensive about returning to the city on seven hills. O Ibadan! Someone, anyone in heaven, tell J.P. Clark that the city he loved no longer loves as it should. Ibadan’s love is transactional. It’s producing doctors who are overwhelmed by an unending workload, despite already sacrificing so much in training. Doctors who cry in private, cursed by patients and relatives in pain; the latter unaware of the former’s burden. I’ve witnessed a relative at Accident and Emergency curse a registrar’s entire lineage for perceived ‘negligence’, unaware that she was covering two other wards several flights of stairs away. At home, I get to screen such scenes out.  

Every ‘will you take?’ from my parents is accompanied by a resounding ‘yes!’ I reject nothing; considerate of their pockets while accepting that the severity of the situation demands adequate preparation. Spaghetti. Tomato paste. Detergent. So that when I return to those walls, I have one less problem to bother about. In the four years since I’ve been in Ibadan, my weekly allowance has multiplied by 2.5. However, the value of this amount is lower. As an admission-seeker in 2019, a meal of white Amala (lafun) and egusi was affordable at ₦150. Upon resumption in 2021, I could still have a good meal of the same dish for ₦300. Now, I need about ₦800 to make anything work. So, you’ll excuse my school haul. It’s just pragmatism. 

18 JANUARY 2025

I type this from the recently upgraded Anatomy reading room, a 64-desk, cream-colour fading, drab affair, situated next to a morgue. The upgrade in question was a much-needed transition to solar power. In the two weeks after the pegged 03 January 2025 resumption date, and like many residents of ABH unfortunate enough to have resumed, my days and nights are spent outside UCH’s walls. It’s been 78 days without electricity. Consultants are on strike. Things are much worse. But life goes on.  

At night, you can’t tell as you walk in through the hospital’s main entrance that it’s abysmal. But it is. Fancy Christmas lights are still up. It also helps that most of my returns occur when I could care less about the institution. I just want to find my way to my inky black room. On my last of such trips, I was well past three blocks in the hall before thoughts settled on how patients and medical practitioners alike were dealing with the blackout. I wonder how many doctors are still ‘setting lines’ with torches. The theatre generator’s new short schedule handicaps hundreds needing surgical intervention. Are people being told to bring lamps? And the ICU? The campus journalist in me sees a story. But he’s a tired Barthemeus.  

It’s gotten cold over the past few hours. One of the two well-worn air conditioners—products of a 2009 Education Trust Fund (known since 2011 as the Tertiary Education Trust Fund or TETFUND) intervention—is on full blast. It’s funny how I’d rather take on the effects of the cold (ill-prepared as I am in terms of clothing) than brave yet another fruitless night in my paid-for residence. Tonight, I’m the only one from UCH in the reading room. On some other days, as many as four of us are here. The oldest haven’t been pre-clinical students since 2021. Yet, at intervals without fail, they are forced to make pilgrimage back to these hallowed chambers. We all, sweater-less and lightly dressed as we are, plunge neck-deep into whatever task sits before us for the night. For an immediate senior colleague, it’s reading for his obstetrics and gynaecology posting. The other needs the power for his laptop to research. These early career talents wouldn’t have to travail in such petrifying conditions, in a better system. Sadly, ‘despite’ is the norm.  

About a month ago, the Academic Staff Union of Universities released a statement decrying the possible erasure of TETFUND by the Federal Government, a consequence of the 2024 Tax Bill. According to the proposal, TETFUND will disappear for good by 2030. I’ve seen enough TETFUND-backed infrastructure in universities across the South West to understand just how big of a deal said erasure would be. By 2030, I’ll have graduated. However, many junior colleagues won’t have. They might dwell in a world where the reading room for preclinical undergraduate Medical and Dental students in the nation’s number four varsity—one some of the current lecturers used while students themselves—has just one functional, 16-year-old, AC. They will do this by taking loans from the Nigerian Higher Education Loan Fund. Right now, these future sufferers are in schools across the federation, images of a prestigious studying experience occupying their dreams. It’s worsened by the deluded conversations on social media about our tertiary institutions. ‘University of Lagos is better than University of Ilorin’, ‘Obafemi Awolowo University is better than University of Benin.’ Meanwhile, Students’ Unions are fighting school fee increments amidst pockets of protests. 

I’ve allowed my mind to wander too far. The short ten-minute walk taken before writing the rest of this section does not provide ease. There have been rumours of power being restored in time for an accreditation exercise. It speaks to the low level of trust many students have in the institution, that they believe that it could be restored just for the exercise alone. After all, our hospital is famed for its people-facing actions. Its Public relations are excellent. It’s a wonder that media cry-outs have been as minimal as they currently are. Not even the University of Ibadan Students’ Union threat to protest by Monday—the conclusion to a seven-day ultimatum to address the concerns appropriately—can move these folks.  

At this point in the night, angst has become anger. Anger at the system; at sixteen-year-old me, who insisted on writing UTME a second time despite a 300+ score on my first try, all to come to the ‘premier’ university; at the trader from yesterday who insisted on selling a pack of my latest favourite biscuits for ₦100 more. That addition altered my mathematics for later today when I plan to leave for a change of clothes at ABH. I’m also angry at how such a sum could leave me frowning almost twelve hours later. It’s the amala situation from months ago. Residents of the UCH, Ibadan are not well.  

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02 FEBRUARY 2025

I type this from a single-bed bunk in a room in the oldest hall at the oldest university in Nigeria. The recent paint job, a shade of green better suited to an operating room, an assortment of personal belongings, and minor details like the not-quite-empty bottle of groundnut oil on an adjacent table, tell not the history of this room; or of the men who have gazed from the balcony at the infamous Love Garden. It’s been a week and five days since we took to the streets to demand electricity; a week and four days later than I intended to write. I’m exhausted. By Allah, I’m spent. I write now because I cannot keep delaying. My thoughts have festered long enough, and Hope’s departure from Pandora’s amphora is a looming inevitability.  

The ultimatum came around and as expected no one responded. We expected that—anticipated it, even. A fair deal of organization by student leaders had infused gumption into our ranks as we prepared to march—three clear-cut demands and one ultimate goal: power. I hadn’t worn my black ‘preclinical press’ shirt in a while, and it felt symbolic that black was the chosen uniform for our demonstration. In fact, the last time I donned said shirt for ‘fieldwork’ was on the day of the 2023 presidential elections. I digress.  

In the days that followed the protest, I would ask myself repeatedly why writing I just could not do. I blamed it on fatigue from the march as I was physically exhausted for two days. Then the fatigue passed and I blamed the need to write much-needed press articles, like the follow-up story after yet another politician failed us. But soon enough, I acknowledged that I was correct the first time. It was fatigue, the mental kind. There’s an exhaustion that comes with watching the same scenario play out—in HD, no less—that quickly zombifies one. My local press organization, the University of Ibadan Medical Students’ Association Press, has published over 25 articles in the past few months, detailing and analysing the situation. I wrote a good deal of that number. On some days, it reads like Ghost said on Hunger Cries, ‘Ever felt like you’re in a low-budget Nollywood flick and it’s a crap scene/the Naija version of Groundhog Day, and you’re stuck in this recurring bad dream.’ There’s no point in writing if no one is reading. No point screaming, if even the void is deaf. I was tired of being one more statistic in studies on medical students dealing with burnout. My fingers refused to partake in the click-clack ritual that birthed paragraphs of despair. And my brain, far from loving doom scrolling as I turned to typing other things instead, refused to cooperate.  

On that Wednesday, as our number converged on the Oyo State secretariat, my best friend of almost four years and I stopped to catch our breath. At first, we didn’t say anything, just a hug and a moment to take it all in. Then we laughed. Sardonic chuckles. She mentioned how she never in a million years would have imagined walking the streets of Ibadan to demand as basic an amenity as power. We were two sad young adults in a crowd of about 200; some also sad, some marching for political gain—Students’ Union elections are around the corner, and many are angry. You could not have found an angrier crowd anywhere in the country that day. Especially when at our final destination, the federal secretariat, Ikolaba, the head of housing promised to restore power by Friday. Of course, he didn’t. We didn’t expect the truth, to begin with. Even though our demands were not met, we didn’t fail. But we know we might not win. That’s the poison. 

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06 FEBRUARY 2025

This is my final entry, written from the Adekunle Adepeju Building/Students’ Union Building. There has been no power for 97 days. Surgeries are on hold. Patients are dying. And in the best teaching hospital in Nigeria, it is just another Thursday.  

The century mark approaches. Some efforts have been made to alleviate the burden of darkness. For ABH, it’s the TV room, where a solar-powered charging hub has been installed. Rules? Students are to charge one device, give or take, for about two hours daily, with four batches scheduled between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. daily. When the announcement is made on the Central Hall WhatsApp group, residents are so stunned that most scroll on. It’s not the most outlandish news received in the past few months. We are the shell-shocked soldiers of defeat in a war against the powers that be, or the ‘yams’, like rapper, Kendrick Lamar says on ‘King Kunta’. For the hospital complex, it’s inverters, longer-lasting bulbs, and generators. Vendors have resorted to purchasing blocks of ice for their drinks. Printing and photocopy shops are more efficient with their generator usage. We have been pushed to the wall and look to become one with our cells.  

I’ll return to Mellanby Hall and my junior colleague, studying for his upcoming Part 1 Medical Board examinations, in a few minutes. As I stare out at the Student Union Building swimming pool, students singing at the Music Department Building on the other side of its fence, I wonder if Day 120 approaches after 100, then 150, and then a double century, like the rare cricket batsman score. I wonder how long we’d get respite if the power is restored before then. How soon before it’s back to the long queues and pilgrimages to UI? The UI Student Union Executive aspirants I interviewed earlier, as part of an Election Watchroom Initiative, are stumped. One fluffed her question about the blackout so badly that I cussed. I wonder what future it is I’ll occupy in another 97 days. How soon before I’m clerking again?  

The pool is restful. So maybe that’s a sign. To be still and wait for the worst to come⎈

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