How SROL is Building Trust in Host Communities with Holistic Healthcare Initiatives

Oluchi Chibuzor

Nigeria’s healthcare system is riddled with infrastructure deficits, high healthcare costs, and underfunding. In recent years, it has faced some of its biggest challenges, including infectious disease outbreaks, financial uncertainty, and staffing crises, ranking it as the country with the lowest life expectancy globally. This inadequate healthcare system leaves a need for non-governmental support to improve the quality of care.

Increasingly, it is NGOs and responsible corporate actors that are stepping in to bridge these gaps through targeted outreach, education, and frontline healthcare interventions.

Over time, extractive industries, such as the oil and gas and mining sectors, have been strong drivers of economic growth, CSR, and community care. They have proven to be vital resources for building long-lasting infrastructure and fostering impactful empowerment initiatives. Yet the sector is often narrowly defined by extraction alone, weakening its reputation and the trust of host communities.

One effective way to rebuild that trust is through holistic healthcare programmes that demonstrate genuine, sustained care beyond the mine site.

Segilola Resources Operating Limited (SROL), operator of Nigeria’s first large-scale gold mine, is a perfect example of building trust beyond the mine through sustained care, starting with its first comprehensive medical outreach programme in its host communities – Imogbara, Odo-Ijesha, and Iperindo in 2023. The company partnered with The Living Hope Care Foundation, a community-based NGO with two decades of community healthcare activities in and around Osun State, to provide wellness and screening exams, diagnosis and treatment of medical problems, laboratory testing, and eye care.

The outreach programme marked the beginning of SROL’s enduring commitment to healthcare projects and served as the foundation for the company’s community involvement activities. In October 2023, the company also donated drugs worth over N500,000 to the primary health care centres in these communities.

In 2024, SROL held its second annual comprehensive community medical outreach, significantly expanding its reach to 2,000 community members, including individuals from the local prisons. The two-day event included advanced diagnostics, patient consultations, surgeries, and the distribution of necessary medications. The outreach also focused on disease prevention to promote long-term wellness.

In 2025, the medical outreach was further expanded to reach over 3,000 residents across its host communities, and SegunCare, a new initiative offering continuous follow-up and support for residents with chronic conditions (including mental illness), was launched, ensuring care extends beyond the two-day outreach. This programme has helped lower the stigma associated with mental illness and enhanced access to necessary chronic disease management in host communities.

These healthcare initiatives have improved SROL’s reputation in the Imogbara, Odo-Ijesha, and Iperindo communities and across Osun State, with communities now relying on SROL and other responsible companies for ongoing healthcare.

As Nigeria’s mining sector evolves, its future will increasingly be defined by impact rather than extraction alone. SROL’s sustained investment in healthcare demonstrates how thoughtful partnerships and holistic programming can enable extractive industries to contribute meaningfully to community wellbeing, while building trust, resilience, and shared value over the long term.