Prominent human rights lawyer and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, has issued a scathing critique following the death of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in a London hospital on Sunday.
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Reacting on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Odinkalu called out Nigeria’s political elite for their continued reliance on foreign healthcare systems, warning that failure to invest in local medical infrastructure would leave them destined to “return as cargo.”
“#Nigeria’s current rulers may need to be reminded: Those who die in foreign hospitals only get to return to the country as cargo. They don’t pass through @immigrationng. Rather we clear them through @CustomsNG as import. If you don’t want this, build a hospital that can work for you,” Odinkalu posted.
His comments have reignited public anger over the decades-long collapse of Nigeria’s healthcare system a system many blame on successive governments’ chronic neglect and misplaced priorities. Buhari’s passing in a London hospital, while unsurprising to many Nigerians, has become another symbol of elite abandonment of the very institutions they were elected to strengthen.
Adding to the concern, reports have emerged that another former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, is also critically ill and receiving treatment in London.
In the wake of Buhari’s death, many Nigerians have joined Odinkalu in condemning what they describe as a recurring and shameful pattern. Public discourse is now flooded with frustration over how the country’s leaders repeatedly fail to fix the broken systems they escape from only to die in the comfort of foreign clinics, far removed from the hardship at home.
“They never built hospitals for us, yet they run abroad to die in peace,” one commentator wrote.
“Why is London their favourite place to die?” another asked.
Critics argue that decades of budgetary neglect, poor leadership, and widespread corruption have left Nigeria’s health sector under-resourced and unsafe even for minor medical issues. As a result, the elite routinely seek care abroad, refusing to subject themselves to the very systems they imposed on ordinary Nigerians.
“They never trusted the healthcare system they oversaw. They never planned to be part of the suffering they allowed,” reads another widely circulated comment.
“Nigeria has become the cemetery of the common man, while London remains the hospice of the elite.”
With Buhari’s death once again shining a spotlight on the healthcare divide between Nigeria’s ruling class and its citizens, Odinkalu’s warning serves as a bitter but timely reminder: if leaders continue to neglect domestic health reforms, their legacies and their bodies may forever be repatriated not in honor, but in silence, as cargo.
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