MRI, Priorities, and Cost of Negligence in Kwara’s Health Sector

Adeniyi Ìṣhọlá

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article to draw attention to what I described as an alarming and unacceptable reality: the absence of a single functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine in any public hospital in Kwara State.

That article was prompted by the grief of a lady, who had taken to X (formerly Twitter) to mourn her uncle, whose death she attributed to the unavailability of MRI services within Kwara. Her pain exposed what many residents already knew but had come to normalise — that for certain critical diagnostic services, Kwarans are largely on their own. In today’s world, how can an entire state with a population of over three million people operate without one functional MRI machine in its public hospitals? This is the heartbreaking reality Kwarans have had to endure for about seven years of the present administration in the state.

In that piece, I concluded that this was not merely a funding issue but a question of priority. This is because Kwara has received substantial federal allocations and internally generated revenue over the past seven years. While the administration of Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has repeatedly claimed to have invested billions of naira in the state’s health sector, no state-owned hospital could boast of an MRI machine, a critical diagnostic equipment.

Shortly after my article was published, the state government responded through the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Amina Ahmed El-Imam. In the state, the government announced that it had procured a “state-of-the-art 160-slice CT scan and a modern 1.5 Tesla MRI machine,” which would “soon be commissioned.” That claim, as of the time of writing this piece, remains unconfirmed, and the equipment has not yet been made operational for public use.

Even more revealing was a comment made by the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Rafiu Ajakaye, who disclosed on a Kwara-focused WhatsApp platform that the state government had placed an order for an MRI machine since July 2025. When asked why it took the government over six years to make that purchase, he said the government did not consider the MRI machine a priority for Kwarans. According to him, it was not even among the state’s first 10 priorities. That statement, as troubling as it is, confirmed what I had previously said that the issue is not lack of funds; it is lack of priority.

In modern healthcare delivery, an MRI machine is not a luxury item. It is a critical diagnostic tool used in detecting strokes, brain injuries, spinal cord damage, tumors, cancers, internal bleeding, and complex neurological conditions. In an emergency situation, timely imaging can be the difference between life and death. Yet, patients in need of MRI services in Kwara have for years been forced to travel outside the state, often at enormous financial and emotional cost. For critically ill patients, that delay can be catastrophic.

To now describe such equipment as “not a priority” for a state raises serious concerns about how healthcare priorities are determined by the Abdulrazaq administration. Is it not absurd that a government that considered an essential diagnostic tool a non-priority could afford to spend billions of taxpayers’ funds on white elephant projects whose value or impact to the average Kwaran remains questionable? When critical medical infrastructure is absent, human lives are put at risk.

I earlier mentioned the story of the lady who lost her uncle due to the unavailability of an MRI machine in Kwara. Tragically, only on Monday, another young life was lost under similar circumstances. Lucky Elohor, a promising 30-year-old woman, required urgent MRI screening. Because the service was not available anywhere in Kwara, she had to be transferred out of the state to Ogbomosho. She did not survive. These are just the two cases we heard about. There are likely many others whose stories never reached social media. Families quietly bore their losses without public outrage.

Governor Abdulrazaq must take responsibility for these deaths and many others that must have occurred due to the negligence and failure of his administration to provide this important diagnostic equipment. Perhaps the lives of the young Elohor and the other man could have been saved if there was a functioning MRI machine in the state.

The governor and his team should know that no amount of bureaucratic explanation can justify their failure. They should also know that equipment procured after years of silence and only in response to public pressure cannot be presented as evidence of “clear and measurable strides.” If anything, it underscores the government’s negligence and failure.

Lucky Elohor’s story should not fade into another social media trend. It should force a serious conversation about healthcare infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and the true meaning of investment in the health sector, not only in Kwara but across Nigeria.

•Ìṣhọlá writes from Ilorin