When the lights go out at UCH…

HERE is something profoundly symbolic—and deeply tragic—about a hospital swathed in darkness. In the operating theatre, darkness is not an inconvenience; it is a death sentence. In the intensive care unit, a power outage is not a management failure; it is a clinical catastrophe. And yet, for more than 16 months, the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Nigeria’s oldest and most venerated tertiary health institution, has been lurching from one blackout to another, managing a crisis so chronic that its workers have now been compelled to abandon patients to make the government hear them. The only question that matters is this: who is responsible, and why does nobody seem to care? Founded in 1957 as the first teaching hospital in the entire British Commonwealth, UCH Ibadan is not just a building or a bureaucratic entity. It is a monument to Nigeria’s post-independence ambition. At its peak, it pioneered open-heart surgery in Nigeria. It trained generations of physicians who now run hospitals across Africa and the world. Nigerians who could not travel abroad looked to UCH as their last resort, their sanctuary of hope. That this institution — “Oritamefa” as it is affectionately known — should in 2026 be plunged into prolonged darkness over an unpaid electricity bill is not merely a scandal. It is a civilisational indictment.

The facts are damning. Between November 3, 2024, and February 12, 2025, UCH was enveloped in total darkness for 102 consecutive days — more than three months — after the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) disconnected the facility over an outstanding debt of approximately N400 million, part of a ballooning total liability reportedly exceeding N3.1 billion. Vaccines spoiled. Surgeries were cancelled. New admissions were halted. Patients on life-support equipment were exposed to mortal risk. And yet, even after that humiliation, the power supply was not adequately restored. Instead, electricity was rationed and restricted — a slow drip of voltage that, according to eleven unions under the Council of UCH Union Leaders (CUUL), was being deliberately managed to deny workers and patients the basic infrastructure to function. This is what drove healthcare workers to declare a five-day warning strike on March 3, 2026, shutting down services at a hospital that sees tens of thousands of patients annually. The workers are right to be angry. They are also right to be desperate. But their anger and despair should be directed, with surgical precision, at the two men whose professional mandates make this crisis directly their responsibility—the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, and the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu. Between these two men lies the full scope of the UCH power crisis. One oversees the nation’s health infrastructure; the other oversees its electricity supply. Together, they have had more than a year to resolve a problem that, by any objective measure, should have been solved within weeks. They have not.

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What is equally troubling —and what the Nigerian public must confront honestly—is where the attention of both ministers appears to be directed. In July 2025, Minister of Power Adelabu stood before APC stakeholders and declared, with the chest-thumping confidence of a man who believes history owes him something, “Emi lokan” — it is my turn. He was not talking about restoring electricity to UCH Ibadan. He was announcing his intention to contest the 2027 governorship election in Oyo State. The same state, incidentally, where UCH Ibadan sits. The irony is grotesque. A minister whose primary duty includes ensuring that the nation’s power infrastructure serves critical institutions like UCH is too busy assembling political machinery for an election rather than fix a hospital that lies within the very constituency he wishes to govern. Meanwhile, Minister Ali Pate, a globally respected public health expert who came into office with enormous goodwill and high expectations, has not been idle either—though perhaps not idle in the right direction. Reports have consistently linked him to growing 2027 governorship consultations in Bauchi State. Royal fathers have blessed him. Old boys’ associations have endorsed him. His political temperature is rising. But what is also rising — and more catastrophically—are the electricity debts at Nigeria’s teaching hospitals, the despair of healthcare workers, and the body count of patients who receive substandard care because a hospital that should be world-class cannot keep its lights on.

It is fair to ask: what exactly has Professor Pate done about the UCH power crisis in the 12-plus months it has festered? Teaching hospitals fall under his ministerial supervision. The Federal Government funds UCH. The unpaid electricity bills to IBEDC are a product of inadequate budgetary allocation and chronic bureaucratic neglect—issues that a Coordinating Minister of Health should be interrogating with the Treasury, the Finance Ministry, and the President himself. Has he? If so, to what effect? Has he held emergency meetings with his power sector counterpart? Has he appeared at UCH Ibadan to assure workers and patients that their government sees them? The silence from both ministers is deafening! The CUUL and the Association of Resident Doctors are appealing to “well-meaning Nigerians” and the “Federal Government” to intervene. It is a heartbreaking appeal—the kind that reflects a people who have learned, through bitter experience, not to expect the men and women in charge to do their jobs without public pressure.

When doctors and nurses must beg for electricity the way ordinary Nigerians beg at traffic lights, something fundamental has collapsed in the social contract between the state and its citizens.

There is a pattern in Nigeria’s governance culture that this crisis exemplifies with uncomfortable clarity: ministers treat their portfolios as waiting rooms. They occupy their offices long enough to build political capital, establish patronage networks, and position themselves for the next electoral cycle — all while the infrastructure under their watch decays, the institutions under their supervision crumble, and the people they were appointed to serve suffer in silence. UCH Ibadan is not suffering in silence. It is shouting. The unions have shouted. The patients have wept. The doctors have downed their tools. And still, the men with the power to act are measuring political footprints in Oyo and Bauchi States.

Nigeria cannot wait for UCH Ibadan to decay. President Bola Tinubu, who must ultimately own this failure, should immediately direct the Finance Ministry to settle UCH’s electricity debts in full, mandate a dedicated and uninterruptible power supply infrastructure for the hospital — including solar or alternative energy — and demand accountability from both ministers. If they cannot resolve this crisis because they are too consumed by their political ambitions, they must resign now!

A hospital in darkness is a nation confessing its failure. UCH must not remain in the dark.

•Kareem, a public policy analyst, writes in from Abuja.