Health
Nigeria needs diaspora expertise to fix healthcare gaps — US-based doctor
United States-based Chief Executive Officer of Cardiac Renal and Vascular Associates and visiting Professor of Medicine (Cardiology and Nephrology) at the University of Lagos, Olurotimi Badero, tells AYOOLA OLASUPO about his journey to becoming a specialist physician in the United States, his Nigerian roots, career, and commitment to improving healthcare in Nigeria
You grew up in Ebute Metta as the seventh of eight siblings. What childhood experiences shaped the person you became?
Growing up in Ebute Metta as the seventh of eight children taught me some of life’s most important lessons before I was old enough to recognise them as lessons. Life was simple, but it was full of people, relationships, movement and a profound sense of belonging.
Family was not an abstract idea; it was something you experienced every day, as was community.
In a large family, you learn very quickly that the world does not revolve around you. You learn to listen, share, negotiate, cooperate and occasionally compete, but you also learn that your individuality matters. You have to find your own voice without losing your place within the larger whole.
Those experiences shaped much of who I became. They gave me resilience, but also an appreciation for people. They taught me that circumstances do not have to determine the limits of your imagination and that the ability to adapt is one of the most valuable forms of intelligence. Looking back now, I realise that Ebute Metta was my first classroom. The first lessons were about people. Medicine came later.
You once wanted to become an engineer before your father encouraged you to study medicine. How significant was that conversation in determining the direction of your life?
It was a profoundly important conversation because it occurred at a moment when my future was still unwritten. I had imagined engineering for myself, but my father saw another possibility. He recognised something in me that I had not yet fully recognised in myself.
I do not, however, see it as my father choosing my life for me. I see it more as his opening a door. He allowed me to consider a path I might otherwise have overlooked.
Once I entered medicine, something unexpected happened: I discovered that it contained many of the qualities that had attracted me to engineering: science, precision, problem-solving and complexity, but it added something that was even more profound: service.
Medicine allows you to solve a problem while standing beside the person whose life is affected by it. That distinction became increasingly meaningful to me.
After completing your medical education in Nigeria, you moved to the US for postgraduate training. What were your first impressions of America, and what cultural adjustment did you find most challenging?
My first impressions were a mixture of excitement, admiration and humility. I was impressed by the scale of the healthcare system, the technology available to physicians and the emphasis on protocols, documentation, standardisation and systems.
But one of the earliest lessons I learned was that medical knowledge is portable, while medical culture is not necessarily so.
I had been trained as a physician in Nigeria, but I now had to learn how medicine was practised in America. The professional environment was more structured and protocol-driven. Communication was different. There was a stronger expectation that you would speak up, ask questions, document carefully, communicate directly and participate actively in decision-making.
There were cultural adjustments outside medicine as well. Everyday life demanded a different kind of independence, and even ordinary social interactions had their own rhythms and expectations.
Initially, those differences required conscious effort. Eventually, they became part of my education. I learned that medicine is not practised in a vacuum. A physician must understand not only the disease, but also the system, the culture and the human beings within that system.
As a Nigerian doctor entering the American medical system, did you ever feel the need to work harder or prove yourself because you were an immigrant?
Yes. I was conscious that I was entering the system as an outsider in more than one sense. I was not only new to the American medical environment; I had also been trained in another country and was learning a different professional culture.
There were moments when I felt that I had to demonstrate my knowledge, reliability, judgment and adaptability before people fully understood what I could contribute. That awareness pushed me to prepare more carefully, seek feedback and hold myself to a very high standard. But I also learned not to make the mistake of interpreting every difficulty through the lens of immigration. Medical training is demanding for everyone.
Ultimately, trust is earned through consistency: doing the work well, communicating clearly, remaining humble enough to learn and putting the patient first. Over time, I came to understand something else. Being Nigerian was not simply a circumstance I had to navigate; it was part of what I brought to the profession.
My background had given me experiences that were different from those of many of my colleagues. Eventually, I understood that difference does not have to be a disadvantage. Properly understood, it can become a source of perspective.
You eventually spent about 10 years undergoing postgraduate training across different areas of medicine. What sacrifices did that period require from you?
Almost a decade of postgraduate training requires you to become comfortable with delayed gratification. For much of that period, training had to take precedence over almost everything else. Professionally, there were long hours, demanding rotations, examinations, constant learning and the pressure to perform at a high level.
Each new stage required a degree of reinvention; you entered a new environment, learned new expectations, earned new trust and gradually assumed greater responsibility. But the greatest sacrifice was personal time.
There were birthdays I missed, holidays I could not fully enjoy, family occasions I could not attend, friendships that had to survive my absence and ordinary moments with people I loved that could not be recovered. Being away from Nigeria intensified that sense of distance. There were times when the professional journey felt exhilarating, and there were times when it felt lonely.
But adversity has a way of revealing what is essential. Those years taught me discipline, patience, humility and resilience. More importantly, they taught me that progress is not always dramatic. Sometimes progress is simply the decision to continue.
I do not regard those 10 years merely as years I sacrificed for a career. They were years in which the career, and the person behind it, were being formed simultaneously.
You lost your younger brother while pursuing your medical career. How did that experience affect your relationship with Nigeria, your family and your sense of purpose?
Losing my younger brother changed me in ways that professional achievement never could. It reminded me that life has a way of placing our ambitions in their proper perspective. We can spend years pursuing qualifications, positions, recognition and professional milestones, but ultimately, it is our relationships and our humanity that give those achievements meaning.
Being away from Nigeria made the loss especially painful. Distance suddenly became more than geography. It became an emotional reality, the awareness that while I was building one part of my life thousands of miles away, the people and relationships that had formed me remained at home.
In some ways, that experience deepened my relationship with Nigeria. It became not merely the country I had left, but part of the emotional architecture of who I was.
It also changed the way I saw medicine. Every patient became even more clearly a human being before becoming a diagnosis. Behind every chart is someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s brother, someone’s sister or someone’s child.
Grief does not necessarily answer our questions. Sometimes it changes the questions. I began to move from asking, “How far can I go?” to asking, “What can I do with what I have been given?” That question has stayed with me.
You have built a successful medical career in the US, yet you continue to maintain strong professional ties with Nigeria. What has kept that connection alive?
My relationship with Nigeria has never been merely professional. It is personal, historical and deeply rooted in identity. Nigeria is where my earliest understanding of family, community, responsibility, ambition and perseverance was formed.
America became an important part of my professional development, but becoming established in another country did not require me to become detached from the place that formed me. In fact, the opposite happened. The more I learned abroad, the more conscious I became of the value of sharing what I had learned.
I have always believed that knowledge becomes more meaningful when it circulates. If your professional journey gives you access to knowledge, experience, relationships and opportunities, there is something profoundly satisfying about allowing those benefits to reach beyond yourself.
That is why my involvement with Nigeria has taken many forms: teaching, mentorship, professional collaboration, training and institutional relationships. Distance changes geography. It does not have to change responsibility.
At what point did you begin thinking seriously about using your US experience to contribute to Nigeria’s healthcare system?
It happened gradually. As I became more experienced within the American healthcare system, I began to see both its strengths and the principles behind those strengths. At the same time, my continued connection with Nigeria made me increasingly aware of areas where knowledge, training and professional collaboration could make a difference.
Eventually, I began to ask myself a different question about my career. It was no longer simply, “What can this experience do for me?” It became, “What can I do with this experience?”
That is an important transition in any professional life. At some point, accumulation has to give way to contribution. My desire to contribute to Nigeria therefore evolved naturally, from sharing knowledge to mentoring, strengthening professional relationships and eventually participating more directly in healthcare development.
You’ve been involved in training and mentorship in Nigeria and expanded your work through Iwosan Lagoon Hospitals. What have you learnt from working across the American and Nigerian healthcare systems?
Working between the two systems has taught me that healthcare is ultimately a human enterprise. Technology, infrastructure and protocols matter, but none of them operates independently of people, institutions, culture, leadership and context.
America has taught me the value of systems: standardisation, protocols, documentation, accountability, continuous education and processes that reduce unnecessary variation. Nigeria has taught me something equally important: adaptability. It has taught me how much ingenuity is possible when people have to work within constraints, and how important it is to understand local realities rather than assume that a solution developed elsewhere will automatically work here.
Perhaps the greatest lesson is that knowledge transfer must never become knowledge transplantation.
We should not simply take an American system and attempt to reproduce it in Nigeria. We should take the principles that work, combine them with Nigerian expertise and local knowledge, and create something that belongs to the environment in which it must function.
The goal is not to make Nigeria more American, but to make Nigerian healthcare stronger.
What are some practical ways professionals abroad can contribute without necessarily relocating permanently?
Start with what you know. You do not necessarily need to relocate, build a large institution or make a substantial financial investment before you can become useful. You can teach, mentor, collaborate on research, provide virtual training, make professional visits and open doors for people who may not yet have access to them.
But there is an important principle: contribution should begin with listening. Find a genuine need. Find credible people who understand that need from within the local environment. Then work with them rather than simply arriving with an imported solution.
The most sustainable form of contribution is not dependency; it is capacity-building.
If all you do is solve a problem for someone, the problem may return when you leave. If you teach someone how to solve the problem, you have created something that can outlive your involvement.
You identified telemedicine as one way Nigerian professionals abroad can support healthcare at home. How much potential does technology offer for transferring their knowledge and expertise to Nigeria?
The potential is enormous because technology has fundamentally changed the meaning of distance. A specialist sitting in America can participate in a case discussion in Nigeria. A physician in Lagos can learn from a colleague thousands of miles away. A trainee can receive mentorship without waiting for the mentor to board an aeroplane. Continuing medical education can happen across borders.
That is a remarkable transformation. But technology should be a bridge, not a substitute for local capacity. A video consultation cannot replace the need for trained personnel, functioning institutions, reliable infrastructure, appropriate regulation and people on the ground who understand the patient and the environment.
Used properly, however, technology can compress distance. It allows expertise to travel even when people cannot.
Nigeria continues to lose doctors and other health professionals to other countries. From your experience, what can be done to make returning or contributing from abroad more attractive?
Nigeria needs to create an environment in which talented professionals can see not only a job, but a future. That requires better infrastructure, competitive remuneration, professional development, functioning institutions, opportunities for advancement and an environment in which expertise is respected and effectively deployed.
People are more likely to return when they believe they can do meaningful work and see the consequences of that work. But I also think we need to expand our definition of what “returning” means. A professional does not necessarily have to relocate permanently to make a meaningful contribution. There is a spectrum between permanent emigration and permanent return.
Someone can teach for several weeks a year. They can mentor remotely, conduct research, consult, participate in specialist programmes or build institutional partnerships. If we create those pathways intentionally, the Nigerian diaspora becomes more than a story of talent leaving. It becomes a reservoir of talent that Nigeria can continue to access.
How do you balance your professional life in the US with your responsibilities and commitments in Nigeria?
It requires intentionality. Meaningful contribution does not happen simply because one has good intentions. You have to make the time, organise your professional commitments, maintain relationships and be prepared to make sacrifices.
Technology has helped enormously. It allows me to remain connected with colleagues and trainees between physical visits. But I also believe there are moments when presence matters, so I make the effort to be there when being there can add real value.
I also believe strongly in teams. If a programme depends entirely on one person, it is not yet sustainable. My objective is therefore not to become indispensable. It is to help develop people and systems that can continue to thrive.
That, to me, is one of the highest forms of mentorship: not creating dependence on yourself, but creating capability in others.
After spending many years in America, has your understanding of what it means to be Nigerian changed?
Absolutely. Distance has given me perspective. When you live inside a culture, you often experience its values without consciously analysing them. Living abroad made me realise how deeply Nigerian I had become without necessarily knowing it.
I came to appreciate our resilience, adaptability, warmth, hospitality, family networks and extraordinary ability to create community under difficult circumstances.
I also began to understand that identity is not something you have to defend by rejecting everything else. Living in America allowed me to encounter different ways of thinking and different systems of living. I could learn from them without surrendering the values that formed me.
That, perhaps, is one of the gifts of migration: it can teach you that identity is not diminished by perspective. Sometimes, perspective makes identity clearer.
Based on your journey from Ebute Metta to becoming a specialist physician in the US and contributing to healthcare in Nigeria, what does home mean to you today?
Home has become less a point on a map and more a question of belonging, memory, responsibility and connection.
Ebute Metta is where my story began. It represents my roots — the family, community, experiences and values that formed me before I ever imagined the life I would eventually lead. America became another important chapter. It gave me an environment in which I could grow professionally, encounter different systems and ideas, and develop in ways I could not have predicted as a young man in Lagos.
I no longer see those two worlds as competing definitions of who I am. They are chapters of the same story.
And perhaps that is what home ultimately means to me: not simply the place where you live, but the places, people and experiences to which you remain connected, and toward which you continue to feel a responsibility.
I left Nigeria physically, but I never left behind the responsibility of where I came from. If anything, the journey has made that responsibility clearer.
Ebute Metta was where the journey began. What I hope now is that the journey itself can become useful to others.
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