The story I share today is not fiction. It is not exaggerated for drama. It is the lived reality of one Nigerian family whose loved one was swallowed by the black hole that our health system has become.
On September 19, 2025, Mrs. Charity Unachukwu was involved in a road accident in Enugu. She was rushed through a maze of hospitals—each one passing her on like an unwanted burden. From first aid to Orthopedic Hospital, to Parklane, to Memphis, and finally to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu, her journey reveals not just the tragedy of one woman’s death but the rot of a nation.
The Hospital That Kills Hope
At UNTH, the supposed “center of excellence,” her fate was sealed. The family met a doctor who refused to admit her because there was “no bed.” Even when they produced a mattress, then a bed, he refused until 3 a.m.—two hours after they arrived.
Critical lab tests were delayed until morning because “work starts by 9 a.m.” Emergency was not urgent. Blood drawn from her fragile body coagulated because EDTA bottles were not used. More blood was taken, but transfusion never came. For twelve long hours, while her life ebbed away, bureaucracy and negligence held sway.
Porters insulted her husband instead of helping. Doctors deferred responsibility with the common refrain: “That department is different from mine.” Machines were broken, reports delayed, staff indifferent. At 1:45 p.m. on September 20—twelve hours after she was admitted—Charity breathed her last. Not a single unit of blood had been transfused.
This is not just negligence. It is institutional murder.
When Nigeria Happens
The bereaved sister, Phina, captured the heartbreak with words that pierce the conscience: “We did our best but Nigeria happened to us.”
How many families have lived this same horror in silence? How many Nigerians will die not because their sickness was incurable, but because their country is indifferent?
Our leaders, for the smallest of ailments, fly abroad for medical tourism. But the citizens, who cannot afford such privilege, perish in dilapidated wards where neither accountability nor compassion exists.
An Igbo proverb warns: “When a corpse you have no relationship with is carried, it looks like a log of wood.” But one day, the “log of wood” could be your blood, your sister, your father, your child.
The Burden of Leadership
National transformation is not about slogans. It is about systems that work when human lives hang in the balance. A health system where junior staff mock patients, where doctors dodge responsibility, where laboratories shut down at night, where life-saving procedures are delayed by bureaucracy, is not a health system—it is a death trap.
This tragedy calls for accountability at the highest level. The Federal Ministry of Health must investigate. UNTH management must answer. And beyond Enugu, Nigerians must demand systemic reform. If hospitals built to save lives have become slaughterhouses of negligence, then government has failed in its most basic duty: the protection of life.
A Call for Change
Charity Unachukwu is gone. Her story must not be buried with her. It must become a rallying cry for a nation that pretends it is normal to lose lives to incompetence.
True patriots and people of faith must stop wishing “Nigeria will not happen to us.” Instead, we must demand: Nigeria must change.
If the government of the day is serious about national transformation, let it start here—with healthcare, with accountability, with justice for Charity.
Because until something is done, Nigeria will keep happening—to me, to you, to all of us.
