‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’
John F. Kennedy delivered those famous words in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, calling on citizens to look beyond what they could receive from their country and consider what they could contribute to it. For many years, Nigerians have asked a rather different question:
‘What has Nigeria done for us?’
To be fair, there have been many reasons to ask.
We complain about the roads, electricity, insecurity, hospitals, schools, salaries and, especially, the cost of healthcare. But occasionally, something happens that deserves acknowledgement.
So today, let’s flip the question. What has Nigeria actually done for us?
Well, quite a lot; at least in one important area.
Not every time criticism. Let’s give honour when honour is due. Let me tell you about a health program. The programme is the Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (CEmONC). It’s a program that puts money where it matters most: at the bedside of a woman whose life is in danger. The Federal Government’s CEmONC financing intervention, implemented through the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), was designed to remove one of the most frightening barriers to emergency maternal healthcare: the inability to pay.
The logic is simple. A woman shouldn’t die from a condition that can be treated simply because she is poor. A baby shouldn’t die because the family can’t raise money for an emergency operation. And a family shouldn’t be pushed into financial catastrophe because a mother suddenly develops a life-threatening complication during pregnancy or childbirth.
The early results are encouraging. By February 2026, NHIA reported that the intervention had reached more than 32,000 mothers and 1,700 newborns, with more than 250 facilities providing the services across Nigeria. But statistics, impressive as they are, can sometimes hide the human story.
Let me tell you a story.
Let’s call her ‘Aisha’. She was poor. Destitute. Broke, and pregnant with her third child and made a living selling fried awara (soya-bean cakes) by the roadside. This woman was busy selling awara at 8 months of pregnancy not knowing her blood pressure was dangerously high. Of course, she was not attending antenatal care. She was just thinking of how to make a living for herself and her children.
One evening, everything changed. She developed eclampsia and suddenly convulsed. In the process, she fell into the hot oil she was using for her business and sustained serious burns to her face and hands.
The crisis didn’t stop there, as she went into preterm labour and needed an emergency Caesarean section. Imagine being in that situation and then being told: ‘You need an operation, but first, pay the money.’
For a woman selling awara by the roadside, where will that money come from?
Her relatives, realising the gravity of her situation, with her burns and labour pains, rushed her to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. The doctors who attended to her, realised she was eligible for CEmONC, enrolled her into the programme. Aisha received the emergency Caesarean section without having to pay for the covered emergency care. Her premature baby was admitted to the Special Care Baby Unit under the neonatal component of the programme and received care without the family having to bear the usual financial burden.
Once she was stabilised, she was transferred to the Burns Unit, where she remained for another three months. At a point, NHIA officials came from Abuja to confirm because the amount of money that woman ‘chopped’ under the CEmONC and NHIA was outrageous! Eventually, she was enrolled under the NHIA, allowing her to continue receiving the necessary burns care without paying out of pocket.
Think about this: A woman developed a catastrophic complication and needed obstetric emergency care. Her premature baby needed neonatal care. She herself subsequently needed prolonged specialist burns treatment, and at every stage, the financial barrier didn’t become the reason care was withheld. That is what health insurance is supposed to do.
Alhamdulillah, Aisha has since been discharged and is doing well.
This is just one out of the hundreds of success stories that we have witnessed. Women accessing care that would have ordinarily been unavailable to them. Women getting free surgeries. Babies receiving free neonatal care and, free medications. Women receiving up to twelve sessions of dialysis from kidney injury developed from pregnancy complications free of charge. Dialysis that costs up to N15,000 per session fa!
Even from the numbers in our hospital, I know that maternal mortality figures have reduced.
Somebody say Hallelujah!
Of course, we must be careful.
One success story doesn’t prove that the entire Nigerian health system has been transformed. CEmONC still has challenges. Access isn’t yet universal. Facilities need adequate staffing, equipment, medicines and reliable financing. Women still have to reach the hospitals in time. And a programme that saves one woman today must be sustained long enough to save thousands more tomorrow.
Let us give the Federal Minister of Health and NHIA boss their flowers. We have become so accustomed to criticising Nigeria that we sometimes forget to recognise progress when it happens.
When next someone asks what has Nigeria done for you?
Tell them: Nigeria has paid the hospital bill when a poor woman couldn’t. Tell them that my country allows poor, indigent pregnant women to access emergency obstetric care free of charge.
This is what government policy looks like when it reaches an ordinary person. Not a conference. Not a press release. Not a slogan.
Kudos to this initiative!