By Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice
Hospitals and schools – two of the noblest institutions in any society. One heals the body, the other shapes the mind. Yet in today’s Nigeria, both have been hijacked by the same virus, greed. What should be temples of service have become theatres of exploitation.
Private hospitals, for instance, no longer operate as sanctuaries of care but as corporate outposts in white paint and tiled floors. Here, the patient’s wallet, not his pulse, determines his prognosis. A malaria case is billed like cancer therapy. An overnight admission resembles a mortgage plan. The doctor’s oath is buried beneath the ledger book. Call it stethoscope capitalism—medicine, not as healing, but as an extractive industry.
And if hospitals fleece the sick, schools plunder the hopeful. What should be the noble enterprise of shaping minds has degenerated into chalkboard banditry. Proprietors now design fee structures that read like military budgets: tuition, “development levies,” medical charges (for infirmaries with no cotton wool), ICT levies (for classrooms with no functional computers), and the most shameless of all—compulsory textbooks tailored for one child, one term, and never reusable. Growing up, we inherited books from siblings and neighbours; today, educational planners have killed that culture of continuity and replaced it with the gospel of disposability.
Worse still, both sectors have mastered the art of moral hypocrisy. When the country’s woes are tallied, hospital owners and school proprietors are quick to blame politicians. Yet, in their own domains, they are no different: extracting value from society’s weakest points
,illness and ignorance. They condemn corruption in government, while perfecting petty corruption in their billing systems.
This is the silent tragedy of Nigeria: the very professions entrusted with compassion and enlightenment now trade in avarice. The doctor becomes a toll collector at the gate of survival, the school proprietor, a tax farmer of parental anxiety.
So, between hospitals and schools, who wears the exploits button? The answer is brutal, both. One thrives on your fever, the other on your future. And together, they remind us of a bleak truth—that in Nigeria, even the noblest callings have learnt how to turn misery into money.
Sadly musing
