In the heart of Lagos’ Ajegunle community, Mrs. Amarachi sits on a worn wooden bench at the front of her crumbling two-room apartment. The evening sun casts long shadows over the dusty compound, where the air is heavy with the fumes of the faint sound of a distant generator and cries of children playing noisily nearby.
Clad in a faded Ankara wrapper and a loose blouse, she gazes blankly at the dirt road ahead, her hands resting on her lap. Behind her is a set of firewoods, which she cooks with and also sells for a living. At 68 years, Amarachi has been fighting hypertension and diabetes for the past decade since the demise of her husband five years ago, but lately, she struggles to survive.
“This is my reality now,” she begins, adjusting her wrapper while gesturing to her swollen feet. “I’ve been living like this for some years now.”
As Amarachi stood to walk into her room, her gait was slow and deliberate, a reflection of the toll diabetes and hypertension have taken on her frail body. Inside the room, the air is thick with the musty scent of decay, and the cracked walls are filled with a few faded family photographs. In one corner sits a small wooden table scattered with pill bottles and a tattered bag that holds her lifelines—a blood pressure (BP) monitor and a blood sugar testing kit.
“This cost me ₦10,000 years ago,” she says, lifting her BP machine with care. “Now, it’s sold for over ₦30,000. Without the machine, I wouldn’t know how bad my health is.”
Also, her blood sugar testing kit has long been her window into her diabetic condition. Yet, even these tools, symbols of her resilience, are insufficient in the face of her financial struggles amidst Nigeria’s spiraling economic and living crisis.
A Nation in Crisis
Inflation, a weakening naira, and increasing poverty levels have battered Nigeria. Basic needs have surged in cost. But arguably most insidious of all, the economic crisis has created a situation where healthcare is unaffordable for its poorest citizens.
It basically renders it an impossible thing for millions of Nigerians to manage conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. About almost 40% of the citizens of the country are people dwelling below the line of poverty; thus, when medication or health services suddenly surge up, many persons will go through vulnerable situations.
For Amarachi, survival is a daily gamble. Her modest income from selling firewood cannot keep pace with the relentless rise in medication prices.
“These drugs are my life,” she confesses, as she picks up a strip of Glucophage tablets, Daonil and Lexotan packs, and some expired pills she keeps for emergencies. “But they’re so expensive that I cut my doses to make them last longer.” She calculates every expense meticulously: rent, food, and her medication. But the numbers rarely add up.
“The last time I bought a pack of Glucophage, it cost ₦6,000. Daolin is even more expensive—₦9,000,” she explains. Her diet tells the story of compromise. Doctors have warned her to avoid starchy foods, yet garri, rice, and beans are all she can afford. “I know it’s bad for me,” she says. “But what choice do I have? I just eat what I can afford and hope I do not die.”
Amarachi’s health hangs by a thread, a precarious balance she can no longer sustain. “Sometimes, I skip my medication to buy food,” she confesses. But skipping isn’t safe. One day I might not wake up. I just pray every night that I wake up the next morning.”
Amarachi’s fragile health has brought her to the brink of death more than once. She recalls a harrowing day when high blood pressure and sugar levels caused her to collapse. At the hospital, the doctors administered emergency treatment and warned her to eat well and maintain her medications.
“But where’s the money going to come from?” she asks, gathering tears in her weary eyes. Her children barely make enough to get by.”
The World Health Organization says that cases of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, are on the rise in Nigeria. Records by the WHO show that such cases account for almost 29% of all deaths recorded in the country annually.
Yet the fragile state of the country’s healthcare infrastructure and economic challenges have kept patients in a deadly limbo. Amarachi is not alone; many others follow her.
A Mother’s Desperate Plea
In Lagos’ Ojota area, Aminat, 34, sits under the scorching sun as her four-year-old daughter, Sekina, plays around her. As passersby and cars whiz by, Aminat stretches out her hand, her voice hoarse from hours of begging. “Please, anything you can give,” she pleads, many barely noticing her.
Once a cleaner at a bank, Aminat’s life crumbled when she lost her job two years ago. High blood pressure, exacerbated by years of abuse from her estranged husband, now dominates her existence.
“I wasn’t always like this,” she says. A legacy of physical and emotional scars had resulted from her husband’s violent outbursts; it culminated in a car accident that permanently weakened her right arm.
The rising cost of living has pushed Aminat into desperation. Unable to access her drugs like amlodipine, hydrochlorothiazide, and lisinopril, she uses concoctions from the local market.
“But I have no choice,” she says. “Sometimes, I also eat bitter leaf and pray it works.” Her prescribed medications, once her lifeline, have long been replaced by these unregulated alternatives.
Aminat’s struggles with high blood pressure have also made her realize the importance of monitoring her condition regularly. But with no money to buy a blood pressure machine, she is forced to rely on hopes. “I’ve been looking to buy a blood pressure machine for the longest time,” she says. “But it’s just too expensive. I’m trusting God, hoping one day I’ll get one.”
Every day, she stretches out her hand to strangers, begging for money to feed herself and Sekina. “I am not begging for myself alone,” she pleads. “I’m doing this for my daughter. Please help me. Help my daughter. We deserve a chance to live; we deserve a better tomorrow.
Aminat’s story forms part of the bigger tragedy that has continually unfolded across Nigeria, a place where the cost of survival has grown to be beyond the reach of many. To her and a lot of people, the struggle is no longer just a battle with their body; instead, it’s one for dignity, survival, and existence.
Aside from Aminat, many others are also fighting a silent battle while trying to survive their health struggles and Nigeria itself.
Fighting a Silent Battle
Amarachi and Aminat are not alone. On the other side of Lagos, in Ajah, 55-year-old Adedayo Hassan sits on a chair outside his family home, clutching his blood pressure monitor like a lifeline. Diagnosed with diabetes three years ago, he now faces not just the battle with failing health but with Nigeria’s unforgiving economic reality.
He has watched the price of insulin triple from ₦4,000 to ₦12,000—a cost he could no longer bear. “I used to afford my medications, but now I can’t afford them anymore,” he said. Beside him lay his pills, most of which he had cut in half so it could last longer. “Sometimes I skip my dose, even though I know it’s a high-risk thing to do,” he added.
Adedayo’s story echoes across Nigeria, where millions have resorted to rationing medications or abandoning treatment altogether in the face of the mounting living crisis.
“My body feels weak all the time,” Adedayo says, wiping the sweat off his brow. “But what can I do? His legs are scarred from untreated wounds—a common complication of diabetes. “The doctors told me I need insulin, but where will I get the money?” he asks. “Sometimes, I just wonder if it would be better to leave this world than to keep struggling like this.”
He now lives at the mercy of his children, who send whatever little they can to support him. “Sometimes, I feel like a burden,” he says, clutching a bottle of expired medication he continues to take out of desperation. “My daughter sometimes sends me money, but she too struggles to live.”
Healthcare in Crisis
The plight of Nigeria’s most vulnerable is part of a bigger crisis in its healthcare system, where diabetes, hypertension, and many other chronic illnesses have almost become death sentences for poor people.
The humanitarian impact of Nigeria’s current economic crisis is what doctors like Dr. Fathia Ibrahim, who practices at the Welfare Hospital in Ajah, observe daily. “We see more patients coming in with advanced complications, often from lack of regular checkups or medications,” she told Allub Times.
She further describes the situation as dire. “Patients with hypertension or diabetes only come to us when their conditions become critical. This is because they can only afford to attend to themselves when it gets to a critical stage, and then it’s already too late to do anything.”
Pharmacist Musa Abdullahi in Iba also echoes her concerns and paints an equally grim picture. “Medications are now luxury items,” he says. “But now, drugs like insulin and antihypertensives are beyond the reach of many Nigerians. The burden falls on the patients, who are already struggling to survive,” he told Allub Times.
While the government has pledged reforms, little progress has been made. NGOs and community health programs offer some relief, but their reach is limited. “We need systemic change,” says Dr. Fathia. “Subsidized medications, affordable healthcare, investment in local drug production, and better overall living conditions are the only way forward.”
The Price of Survival
As the sun sets, Adedayo walks around his compound; the weight of his reality feels palpable in the quiet evening air as he watches the fading sunlight filled with birds singing while flying back to their nests.
Across Nigeria, the price of survival is more than many can bear. For Adedayo and several others, survival has become a delicate balance of faith, resilience, and luck. Yet the resilience is waning under the crushing weight of Nigeria’s economic crisis.
His story is one of countless others across Nigeria, where rising healthcare costs and poverty are robbing people of their right to life. And as the sun dips below the horizon, Adedayo sits quietly, wondering what tomorrow will bring.
“All I want is to live a little longer, to see my grandchildren grow up,” he says, staring out at the road. “I hope Nigeria will really let me,” he said with a pitying smile on his aged face.
