“The “japa” phenomenon—the migration of Nigerian doctors to safer jurisdictions—is not about remuneration alone. It is about survival. It is about dignity.”
The axe was meant for his skull.
Dr. Mohammed Sani, Principal Medical Officer at General Hospital Misau, Bauchi State, was completing discharge papers on an ordinary Tuesday when the blade came down. The patient’s relative had concealed it beneath his clothing.
The crime that provoked this attempted murder?
Dr. Sani had announced that the patient required referral to a specialist—a judgment call, a standard procedure, a routine act of medical honesty.
This was not an isolated madness. This was July 2022.
Three months later, in October 2022, Dr. Uyi Iluobe was killed by relatives of a patient at a Delta State hospital—beaten to death; his body violated in the very space where he had sworn to heal. The crime shocked even a nation numbed by brutality.
And in February 2025, Dr. Adeniyi was assaulted at Federal Medical Centre Owo by relatives of a surgical patient. He survived. But he carries wounds that will not appear on any X-ray.
The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) condemned the attack. Their statement used words that should haunt every Nigerian: “Hospitals must not become killing fields.”
The Data We Cannot Ignore
A 2025 study from the University of Maiduguri confirmed what doctors have screamed for years: 64.5 per cent of healthcare workers in Nigerian tertiary facilities have experienced workplace violence.
Verbal abuse affected 86.7 per cent—almost nine out of 10. Physical attacks were frequent. Nearly a third of victims thought it “not important to report or talk about the incident.”
Silence enables the cycle!!!
The Legal Vacuum
Here is the devastating asymmetry at the heart of Nigerian health law: there is no statute that specifically protects healthcare workers from assault.
Dr. Austin Aipoh put it with stark precision: “There is no law that says you can’t touch a health worker.”
Patients and relatives may assault, maim, even kill medical practitioners—and face only the general assault provisions of the Criminal Code, rarely invoked, barely enforced.
Meanwhile, doctors practice under Sections 303, 311, and 343 of the same Code—provisions that penalise acts deemed negligent or life-endangering. They face prosecution when outcomes fail. They receive no special protection when attacked.
There is no Good Samaritan law in Nigeria. No immunity for emergency treatment rendered in good faith. No shield for the split-second judgment that separates life from death.
The doctor who attempts resuscitation, who performs emergency surgery, who makes an impossible choice in a corridor of uncertainty, does so knowing that saving a life could end their liberty.
The result is paralysis disguised as caution.
The hesitation before the incision.
The refusal to treat emergencies without upfront payment—not cruelty, but survival instinct.
The transfer of critical patients to distant facilities—not negligence, but fear management.
Why They Leave
When NARD demanded security, compensation, and prosecution of perpetrators after the FMC Owo attack, they were not asking for privilege. They were pleading for the minimum conditions necessary for their profession to exist.
The “japa” phenomenon—the migration of Nigerian doctors to safer jurisdictions—is not about remuneration alone. It is about survival. It is about dignity.
As Dr. Aipoh warned, doctors are becoming an endangered species in Nigeria.
The Dignity Question
Is it dignified to practice medicine under threat of assault?
Is it dignified to exercise clinical judgment under threat of imprisonment?
The current structure of Nigerian health law creates a dangerous inversion: the patient holds rights without responsibility, while the doctor bears responsibility without protection.
This is not sustainable.
This is not just.
This is not healing.
What Must Change
Nigeria urgently requires a Healthcare Worker Protection Act built on four pillars:
First, criminalise assault on healthcare workers as a distinct offence with enhanced penalties. Violence against healers is violence against public health itself;
Second, establish Good Samaritan immunity for emergency care rendered in good faith. Protect those who act to save lives from prosecution when outcomes fail;
Third, mandate security infrastructure in every tertiary health facility—trained personnel, surveillance, emergency response. Hospitals must not be killing fields;
Fourth, create fast-track prosecution mechanisms for offences against healthcare workers. Justice delayed is justice denied—and for the attacked, it is also a message that their lives do not matter.
The Cost Of Silence
The axe that fell on Dr. Mohammed Sani was not merely an attack on one physician. It was an attack on the possibility of healing itself.
When the law leaves healers unguarded, it leaves the sick unhealed.
When the state criminalises medical judgment while tolerating violence against those who practice it, it makes a choice—and that choice is abandonment.
Dr. Uyi Iluobe had a name.
Dr. Sani bears a scar.
Dr. Adeniyi nurses wounds that will not appear on any X-ray.
They are more than statistics. They are a warning.
The law must find its voice…
For the healer who must be protected to heal.
For the patient who will die when the healer is gone.
Know Your Rights — Simply Put
Reality Is What Is Missing
No specific law protects healthcare workers from assault — A Healthcare Worker Protection Act
No Good Samaritan law shields emergency care –Good Samaritan immunity
Hospitals are soft targets – Mandatory security infrastructure
Prosecutions are slow – Fast-track justice mechanisms.
