KEY POINTS
- UK General Medical Council data shows 4,691 Nigerian doctors have relocated to Britain since President Bola Tinubu’s inauguration on May 29, 2023.
- The migration has cost Nigeria at least $98.5 million in training investments, with each doctor estimated to cost about $21,000 to train.
- Nigeria’s doctor-to-population ratio sits around 3.9 per 10,000, far below the World Health Organization threshold, as doctors cite poor pay and unsafe working conditions.
Nigeria’s doctor shortage has just deepened. Fresh data from the UK General Medical Council shows 4,691 Nigerian doctors have relocated to Britain since President Bola Tinubu took office on May 29, 2023, an outflow that, at the federal government’s own training estimate of $21,000 per doctor, amounts to roughly $98.5 million in lost investment in less than two years.
The GMC public register now lists about 15,692 Nigeria-trained doctors practicing in the UK, making Nigeria the second-largest source of foreign-trained doctors in Britain behind only India. As of May 28, 2025, that number stood at a little above 11,000. The pace of departure has accelerated sharply since.
At home, the pressure keeps building. Nigeria’s doctor-to-population ratio hovers around 3.9 per 10,000 people, well below the minimum World Health Organization threshold.
NMA and NARD sound the alarm
The Nigerian Medical Association has been warning for years that poor remuneration, unsafe working conditions and weak infrastructure are driving its members out.
“Our members are overworked, underpaid and exposed to unsafe environments daily. Many are simply burnt out,” the NMA said in a recent statement on workforce migration.
The National Association of Resident Doctors, which represents younger physicians manning Nigeria’s tertiary hospitals, has echoed the warning and pointed at the structural problems pushing colleagues abroad.
“Doctors are leaving because the system is failing them, irregular salaries, excessive workload, and lack of training opportunities,” NARD said in a recent nationwide engagement.
Policy meets stubborn push factors
The exodus carries an awkward subplot. Even as Nigeria loses doctors, its citizens continue to spend heavily on treatment abroad. Foreign-exchange outflow on health-related travel hit $549.29 million in the first nine months of 2025, a 17.96 percent jump from $465.67 million a year earlier, according to central bank data.
Dr. David Adewole, a public health expert, said the federal government’s new policy on health workforce migration is a good start but unlikely to fix the underlying problem on its own. Insecurity, poor pay, weak amenities, high living costs and unreliable electricity, he argued, remain the real reasons Nigerian doctors are heading for the exits.
“To make healthcare workers stay here, let the salaries be enough so that what you earn will be much more than the multiples of what you need for basic needs, like food, power supply, housing, and so forth,” Adewole said, adding that retirees also want to see pensions paid promptly and access to quality care without pulling strings.