Daud Olatunji
No fewer than 10,494 Nigerians are currently listed among staff in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, a development that has renewed concerns over Nigeria’s worsening health workforce shortage and the continued migration of skilled professionals.
The figure, released by NHS Million, a UK campaign organisation focused on NHS staff, places Nigeria as the sixth-largest nationality represented in the NHS workforce, behind British/UK nationals, Indians, Filipinos, Irish and Polish nationals.
Nigeria is also the largest African nationality represented in the breakdown.
The data showed that more than 1.1 million NHS workers identified as British or UK nationals, while Indians accounted for 32,117 staff and Filipinos 25,423.
Among African nationals, Zimbabwe recorded 4,780 NHS workers, followed by Ghana with 3,395, Egypt with 2,895 and South Africa with 1,829.
The growing presence of Nigerian professionals in the British health system comes against the backdrop of a critical shortage of healthcare personnel in Nigeria, where inadequate staffing, uneven distribution of professionals and international migration continue to put pressure on the country’s healthcare system.
The 2025 State of Health of the Nation Report, released by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, reported that more than 20,000 Nigerian health workers relocated abroad within one year.
The affected professionals included 3,919 doctors, 7,487 nurses and midwives, 6,861 medical laboratory professionals, 702 pharmacists, 658 physiotherapists and 274 dentists, among others.
The report further showed that although Nigeria has 95,456 registered doctors, only 60,551 currently hold active practising licences.
The situation is compounded by the unequal distribution of health professionals across the country, with some states, particularly in the North, recording very low doctor-to-population ratios.
The migration of health professionals has therefore become more than a workforce issue, with implications for access to healthcare, quality of services and the ability of hospitals to provide timely care to Nigerians.
The United Kingdom remains one of the major destinations for Nigerian-trained medical professionals.
Data from the UK General Medical Council showed that 4,691 Nigerian-trained doctors joined the UK medical register between May 2023 and April 2026.
The data also indicated that 15,896 Nigerian-trained doctors were licensed to practise in the UK, underscoring the scale of Nigeria’s contribution to the British healthcare workforce.
For Nigeria, however, the figures raise questions about the sustainability of training large numbers of medical and other health professionals when many subsequently leave the country in search of better working conditions and career opportunities abroad.
Migration policy awaits full implementation
In an attempt to address the challenge, the Federal Government approved the National Policy on Health Workforce Migration in August 2024.
The policy seeks to improve retention, strengthen workforce planning and establish a more coordinated approach to health worker migration.
However, the 2025 State of Health of the Nation Report indicated that although an implementation plan had been finalised, full implementation had not commenced.
The report also disclosed that an additional 23,000 frontline health workers were trained in 2025, bringing the total trained between 2024 and 2025 to 78,146.
That represents about 65 per cent of the national target of 120,000 frontline health workers.
The Federal Government’s challenge now extends beyond training more personnel to creating conditions capable of retaining them.
Better remuneration, improved working environments, career progression, adequate equipment and more equitable deployment of professionals have remained central to the debate over Nigeria’s health workforce crisis.
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