Is 25% of the British NHS workforce Nigerian?

Claim: The Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Pate, claimed that 25% of the United Kingdom’s medical workforce are Nigerians, adding that if they were to pull out of the National Health Service, the UK would struggle.

He said, “The UK will need Nigerian doctors; 67% of our doctors go to the United Kingdom, and 25% of the NHS workforce is Nigerian.

“Nigerians are very vibrant, very entrepreneurial, and very capable wherever they are. If Nigerians hold back from the UK, for instance, the NHS will struggle to provide the services that many Nigerians go there to receive.”

Findings:

Over the years, Nigeria has contended with the challenge of an inadequate workforce to meet the medical needs of its 200 million population.

With a doctor-patient ratio over five times worse than the WHO recommendation, the country has continued to lose thousands of doctors annually to developed countries.

According to the Ministry of Health, just over 3,000 doctors are produced annually in the country, despite being the sixth most populous nation in the world.

The National Health Service is the publicly funded health system of the United Kingdom, comprising NHS England, NHS Scotland, and NHS Wales.

Each year, healthcare workers from over 200 countries, including Nigeria, are reported to be employed by the NHS. The proportion of roles filled by nationals and non-nationals is often published in the NHS Digital figures.

Statistics on NHS staff from overseas, published by the UK House of Commons Library in November 2023, however, revealed that 22,851 persons—representing 1.5% of the total 1.51 million NHS workers—are Nigerians.

The data also showed that about 1,151,394, representing 76% of the workforce, are British/UK nationals. On the NHS staff table, Nigeria ranks fourth, behind the Philippines with 34,652 workers and India with 60,533 staff.