Former Assistant Director at Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), Dr Ofodire Emeka, has accused senior officials of obstruction, persecution, and administrative abuse following his advocacy for nuclear medicine reform in Nigeria. Dr Emeka, a 2011 NYSC President’s Honours Awardee, joined the FMOH in 2012 and says his challenges began after challenging what he described as the ministry’s comfort with mediocrity.
“Nigeria’s nuclear medicine programme is still stuck in the 1980s,” Dr Emeka said. “We are operating at Phase One development, while other African countries are deploying PET-CT, PET-MRI, advanced radionuclide therapies, and even proton therapy.” Currently, Nigeria has only two outdated scanners at University College Hospital, Ibadan, and the National Hospital, Abuja, while countries like Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and South Africa operate near world-class standards.
Dr Emeka alleged that between 2008 and 2018, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) attempted to expand Nigeria’s nuclear medicine centres from two to eight, but the FMOH failed to provide counterpart funding and support. After returning from studying nuclear medicine at King’s College London in 2013, he served as Desk Officer for the National Cancer Control and Nuclear Medicine Programmes, encountering a programme “already on life support” due to lack of funding and direction.
He recounted attempts in 2023 to create a separate Nuclear Medicine Office within the FMOH, which were initially welcomed but later blocked at higher levels. “One senior official told me plainly, ‘You are the one causing tension in this ministry,’” he said, adding that his letters to the Minister were deliberately withheld.
By early 2024, Dr Emeka described the work environment as hostile, with colleagues avoiding him. He formally resigned on 1 May 2024, only to have his salary stopped and be queried for absence without leave. In September 2025, more than a year after his resignation, he received a letter claiming his withdrawal of service had not been approved due to disciplinary proceedings.
Dr Emeka is now calling for an independent investigation into what he describes as “systematic abuse of power, suppression of official correspondence, and victimisation of a reform advocate.”
“If we silence people who want change, we should not be surprised that the system keeps failing,” he warned, highlighting how Nigeria’s resistance to reform continues to hinder the healthcare sector.
