By Luqman Kamaldeen Oladayo
Abdulfatai Hammed, a 200 level Law student at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS) felt worried about a statement he had heard before. The statement, is now disturbingly familiar as the usual response of UDUS clinic attendants to students seeking treatment.” Doctor is not on seat”
On that fateful day, Abdulfatai once watched a friend wilt in pain at the waiting room for hours, and had sworn to never seek treatment at the school clinic. That way, he won’t have to bother with the long queue or the endless waiting.
So when his fever spiked two months into the semester, he did what many UDUS students have learned to do: he walked past the clinic into the mini market, where someone would attend to him immediately, even if it meant substandard treatment.
Recounting his experience, Abdulfatai explained that the treatment he was given at the medicine store began with neither proper test, nor diagnosis. The attendant at the store, upon his arrival, arranged for drips and gave him injections which, instead of relieving him, later increased his symptoms.
Barely 12 hours after receiving treatment, his condition became worse, he lost his stamina and required support to walk. His neighbors intervened swiftly by taking him to the school clinic, hoping for emergency care. But they were met with the same excuse: “ The Doctor is not on seat.”
Due to the severity of his situation, Abdulfatai was rushed to Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto Teaching Hospital (UDUTH), about 15 kilometers away from his campus, where he finally got adequate treatment.
“I found qualified nurses, doctors and experts who took good care of me. If you are really sick. I advise that you go to the teaching hospital instead,” he advised.
This experience is not unique to Abdulfatai, across Nigerian universities, students have identified the same pattern of unreliable healthcare services. A 2013 study in the Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice found that 67.2% of students avoid the school clinic because of long waiting times, and 54.8% cited non-availability of essential drugs.
Decades later, the statistics still seem to be relevant. Maryam Umar, another student of UDUS, reached the same conclusion without ever seeing the numbers. After one draining attempt to obtain a clinic card, she gave up entirely.
For three academic sessions , she managed enough. Whenever she felt unwell, she walked to a pharmacy at the school mini market, described her symptoms, received drugs, and went back to her routine. It was comfortable and quick, compared to what she observed at the school clinic. Maryam never needed more than that until her fourth year.
Her condition was so critical that she couldn’t get to the pharmacist by herself. A friend, trying to help, took her to a patent medicine store she had never visited instead.
The difference was not in the care she received, but in how far it goes. There were no tests, no diagnosis, no questions beyond her complaint. The attendant listened, speculated, and began to treat.
The store, cramped, and stifling with heat, was so crowded that Maryam could barely breath. “I received three injections through my hands, I was given drugs and was asked to come back the next day for another two and the subsequent day for another two,” she explained.
Just like Abdulfatai, Maryam’s reason for not considering the school clinic was because she had experience that if she goes there, she would either eventually be told to go and buy drugs that she needed, or get turned away because she doesn’t have a clinic card.
Despite Millions in Yearly Revenue, Suffering Still Persists
Investigations by Pen Press UDUS revealed that the University has in 5 years garnered six hundred and eighty-one million, two hundred and thirty-nine thousand naira (₦681,239,000) for medical services, specifically between the 2021/2022 and 2025/2026 academic sessions.
This calculation is derived from the 2025 Time Higher Education World University Ranking which placed the total number of UDUS students at 23,491.
With each student paying 5,000 naira in the 2021/2022 academic session, a total of one-hundred and seventeen million, four hundred and fifty-five thousand naira (₦117, 455,000) was realized. However, following the increment in tuition in the 2022/2023 academic session, medical services became six thousand naira(₦6000),and has remained the same for the last 4 academic sessions.
However, the University has consistently generated a return of 140,946,000 naira in medical fees for the subsequent four academic sessions. Altogether six hundred and eighty-one million, two hundred and thirty-nine thousand naira (₦681,239,000) in just five years.
Health Risk Climbs Higher as Quackery Continues
Oyewole Shareef, another 200 level Law student, had seen the pattern enough times to lose trust in the system. He had accompanied friends to the school clinic when they needed urgent care, and almost always, the same refrain greeted them: the doctor was not around. Once, he waited two hours with a friend in critical condition before they both gave up and walked away. That was the last time he relied on the clinic as a first option.
Now, whenever he falls ill, he goes straight to the same patent medicine store at the school mini market. Despite the difficulties he faces with paying for the service.
Medical Practitioner Speaks
Doctor Taofeeq Alao, a medical doctor who practices at Osun State, Nigeria, while speaking with Pen Press UDUS opined that the act of patent medicine store owner diagnosing and treating patients is quackery.
This act, he observed, can lead to complications like ; misdiagnosis, improper treatment of disease conditions, indiscriminate use of drugs, antibiotics resistance, late or delayed presentation of patients at the formal health facilities and missed documentation of disease epidemiology.
“Many serious conditions are easily mistaken for mild conditions when doctors are not consulted appropriately which contribute to risk of developing complications or even death at times,” he noted.
AMR Advocate Address Further Health Risk
Zakariya’u Dauda, a public health advocate focused on SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), states what UDUS students experience within a pattern he sees across Nigeria.
“There exist barriers in the structure we adopt that impede attainment of proper healthcare,” he told Pen Press UDUS. “Unregulated health services flourish where healthcare systems are already weak, where diagnostic infrastructure is poor, public health education is limited, and evidence-based care is inaccessible, he said.
He invoked the framework of structural violence, developed by global health scholar Dr. Paul Farmer, to describe how institutional deficits and not just personal negligence push people toward dangerous alternatives.
Mr. Dauda cited figures indicating that between 38 and 56 percent of Africans self-medicate with antimicrobials, with prevalence reaching up to 70 percent in Northern Nigeria. When students walk into a patent medicine store with a fever and walk out with antibiotics with no test, or diagnosis, they are not making reckless choices. They are making the only available ones.
“People frequently purchase these drugs without prescriptions for common illnesses like colds, fever, and diarrhoea,” he said. “Many wrongly believe antibiotics are appropriate for virtually every illness.”
The consequences form silently, because antimicrobial resistance makes routine infections harder to treat, and threatens the safety of procedures like chemotherapy.
His prescriptions are systemic. Democratised access to diagnostic testing. Strict infection prevention standards. Laboratory-based diagnosis rather than guesswork. And comprehensive Antimicrobial Stewardship Programmes in health facilities to govern how antibiotics are selected, dosed, and prescribed.
“Responsible consumption of antimicrobials is essential if we are to combat resistance at all,” he concluded.
While speaking with Pen Press UDUS, Miss Rachael Al Hassan, a community health practitioner who manages a medicine store, owned by her mother, Mrs. Blessing Al Hassan at the school mini market shared that her customers who are students often come to her for treatment because they do not have clinic cards.
However, according to the Community Health Practitioners Registration Board of Nigeria (CHPRBN), established by Act 61 of 1992 (now Cap C19, LFN 2004), a community health practitioner is a specially trained professional authorized to provide promotive, preventive, curative, and rehabilitative health services, particularly at the primary healthcare level.
Even though they can legally open a Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendor (PPMV) store, according to the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, to sell Over-the-Counter (OTC) medicines in their original, pre-packaged containers. They are, however, strictly and legally prohibited from performing clinical procedures like giving injections or administering drips (intravenous fluids) within that premises.
Miss Rachael outrightly denies the alleged dripping and injecting in her store. She affirms that she only dispenses drugs and refers situations that are beyond her expertise to the clinic.
School Management Reacts
Speaking with Pen Press UDUS, Professor Zayyanu Umar Usman, the Dean, Students’ Affairs against challenges faced by students such as doctors’ unavailability, held that the school clinic as the facility is well equipped with sufficient doctors who take shifts for efficiency.
“While I don’t intend to defend the services being rendered in the school clinic, I am sure that we have enough doctors,” he affirmed.
He further stated that the management is committed to serving the very best to the students and shared how it has suffered to maintain the system in a bid to develop the University community.
To corroborate his assertions, Professor Zayyanu placed a call to Doctor Hameedah, one of the doctors working at the school clinic to clarify misconceptions.
Doctor Hameedah, while speaking with Pen Press UDUS, established that she had encountered a plethora of situations where students spread false information about the service being rendered by the school clinic.
“We have even seen situations where more than one student shares a single card,” she noted.
Dr. Hameedah acknowledged how the clinic can be short of drugs sometimes, she further affirmed that the doctors have always been available in the clinic and as at noon 23rd April, 2026 when she spoke with this reporter, three doctors were on duty.
She further shared instances where students who had gone to the mini market for treatment had to come back to the clinic for appropriate treatment after they had wasted their money on these patent medicine stores that render substandard medical treatment.
As complaints and denials continue to exist side by side, students like Abdulfatai, Maryam, and Oyewole are left to make difficult choices each time they fall ill. For some, the fear of waiting endlessly at the clinic now outweighs the fear of receiving treatment from unqualified hands, even when the consequences may be severe and amplifies the problem at all.