By Maroof Asudemade

There’s a disturbing viral video showing the condition of healthcare in Oyo State in which a man was narrating his bitter experience in government hospitals in Oyo State. The sad development described in the video raises a question Governor Seyi Makinde can no longer escape. After all the billions his administration claims to have invested in healthcare, why are ordinary people still struggling to obtain basic medical attention?

For years, the Makinde administration has paraded renovated primary healthcare centres, new equipment, recruitment figures and huge budgetary allocations as evidence of a healthcare transformation. The government claims to have upgraded more than 200 PHCs, equipped 264 facilities and allocated ₦70.85 billion to healthcare in the 2026 budget.

Yet, the reality confronting many residents tells a painfully different story. Investigations have documented severe manpower shortages across Oyo’s primary healthcare system. One investigation found 721 PHCs with only 2,149 workers, while the state Primary Healthcare Board indicated that the system needed thousands more personnel to function adequately. Some facilities were found operating with only one or two permanent health workers.

This is not what a healthcare system undergoing a supposed revolution should look like. What is the use of a renovated health centre when there is no adequate medical personnel to attend to patients? What is the purpose of expensive equipment when there are insufficient trained hands to operate it? What happens to a pregnant woman, a sick child or an accident victim who arrives at a supposedly functional facility and finds inadequate personnel?

The most disturbing aspect is that this problem cannot simply be blamed on a lack of money. The government’s own 2025 budget performance report showed that of the ₦4.27 billion budgeted for primary healthcare while only ₦144 million, just 3.4 per cent, had been spent by the end of the second quarter.

That figure calls for scrutiny and accountability. Oyo people deserve to know why money appropriated for primary healthcare remains largely unspent while healthcare facilities continue to face serious deficiencies.

Even the state’s recent comprehensive assessment of 174 health facilities; 138 primary and 36 secondary, examined gaps in infrastructure, equipment, consumables and human resources. The evidence therefore raises legitimate concerns about years of inadequate attention to the actual functioning of the public healthcare system, particularly at the grassroots. Government cannot continue to measure healthcare improvement by the number of buildings renovated and photographs taken at commissioning ceremonies. Healthcare is about doctors, nurses, midwives, drugs, laboratories, emergency services and competent personnel being available when citizens need them.

The people of Oyo are tired of statistics. They want functioning hospitals. They want PHCs that are genuinely open and adequately staffed. They want a health system where poverty does not become a death sentence.

If Governor Makinde’s administration wants credit for its healthcare achievements, it must also accept responsibility for the facilities that remain inadequately staffed and the citizens who continue to suffer because public healthcare has not delivered what they were promised.

Campaign season should not be a season of propaganda. It should be a season of accountability. After more than seven years in office, the people have every right to ask Governor Makinde: Where is the healthcare transformation you have repeatedly promised us?Because for the ordinary patient lying helplessly in a poorly functioning public facility, government statistics do not cure sickness. Medical personnel do.