Here is the sobering reality: in the roughly five minutes it takes to read this op-ed, about five infants will have died in Nigeria. That is not rhetoric. It follows directly from the data. Nigeria loses approximately 55 infants every hour, or nearly one every minute, year after year. This pattern did not begin recently; it has persisted for decades. Public policy failures are often debated in terms of ideology, leadership, or intent. But some failures are more fundamental than that. They are failures of detection, failures to recognize danger early enough to act. Nigeria’s infant mortality crisis is one such failure. The data are
unambiguous.

Using World Bank data on the number of infant deaths, Nigeria’s infant mortality trajectory reveals a long-running humanitarian challenge. Infant deaths reached a low point in 1977, the year of FESTAC at approximately 370,000 deaths. For a couple of years thereafter, the numbers remained relatively stable, fluctuating within a narrow range. Statistically, this period constituted a clear baseline: low variance, predictable year-to-year change, and no evidence of systemic
deterioration. That stability did not last.

By 1984, infant deaths had risen to approximately 388,000, about 4.8 percent above the nadir in 1977. Repeated year-on-year increases exceeded thresholds used in standard statistical surveillance methods, including cumulative-sum (CUSUM) monitoring and Bayesian modeling, tools employed globally by public-health authorities to detect meaningful shifts in trends.

These changes may appear modest to the untrained eye, but within public-health practice they signal the need for attention and action. Yet no sustained corrective response followed. What has emerged instead is a consistent pattern. This appears less as an isolated malfunction than as a structural weakness. There has been a persistent di iculty in treating data as a core instrument of governance, data that must be properly captured, analyzed, interpreted, and acted upon. More importantly, data has not been consistently used as a predictive tool, capable of signaling future risk before losses become entrenched.

In practice, responsibility has gradually shifted away from institutions and toward individuals, families, clinicians, and communities while government systems at multiple levels have remained largely reactive rather than anticipatory. When examined closely, a contributing factor is the limited integration of STEMM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, into policy leadership and decision-making. Without this foundation, warning signals
tend to be recognized only in hindsight and if at all.

The consequences are evident in recent history. Based on World Bank data, between 2014 and 2023 alone, Nigeria lost approximately 4.8 million infants, nearly half a million deaths per year, or over 1,300 each day. That translates to about 55 infant deaths every hour, almost one infant every minute, sustained year after year. Importantly, these figures reflect reported deaths and may understate the true toll, given the well-documented challenges of capturing all infant deaths, particularly those occurring outside formal healthcare settings. In the same period of time, the total number of infant deaths in the United States were about 214,000.

The magnitude becomes clearer when viewed in absolute terms. Nigeria’s daily infant deaths alone occur at a level comparable to the total daily deaths from all causes in Spain. In 2023, Spain, a country of roughly 49 million people, recorded about 433,000 total deaths, or approximately 1,187 per day, across all ages. In the same year, about 875 infants died in Spain. Infant mortality rates reinforce the same conclusion: approximately 60 deaths per 1,000 live births
in Nigeria, compared with about 3 per 1,000 in Spain, meaning a child born in Nigeria faces a far higher risk of dying in infancy.

These patterns help explain the paradox of sustained donor engagement alongside persistently poor outcomes. Donors act primarily out of humanitarian concern, often assuming that losses on this scale would catalyze urgency and reform. Instead, progress has frequently been limited, with policy discussions and institutional activity not consistently translating into measurable improvement.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian public shows clear signs of fatigue. Decades of unmet expectations, repeated crises, and slow progress have eroded confidence. Families adapt, endure, and grieve, while expectations continue to decline. This exhaustion is itself a signal, one that should not be ignored.

It is important to emphasise that these trends long predate the current administration of President Bola Tinubu, who has been in o ice for just over two years. The data reflect challenges that have accumulated across multiple governments and generations. However, President Tinubu has inherited this crisis, and with that inheritance comes responsibility, not for

its origins, but for whether the long-standing failures documented here are finally confronted. Recognizing this history is not an excuse for inaction by any present or future leadership, but a reminder of the depth, persistence, and urgency of the problem.

Based on the data, it may appear that Nigeria’s best days are behind it, given that over the past 46 years, nearly half a century, the country has not returned to or sustained the nadir in infant deaths recorded in 1977. That conclusion, however, cannot and must not be accepted. The founding fathers of this nation did not envision a country defined by preventable loss and institutional fragility.

Children are not abstractions; they are the future. A society that struggles to keep its children alive cannot credibly claim progress. Anything short of decisive, sustained, and data-driven e orts to reverse this trajectory risks becoming an abdication of responsibility