There comes a season in every nation’s journey when the wrinkles of its elders are not just skin deep, but soul deep, etched with the maps of sacrifice, survival, and service. These men and women once stood in fields, courts, classrooms, and factories. They raised children and tilled dreams. Yet, as age bends its back, the system turns its gaze away. The question stares us in the face: Do Nigeria’s laws and policies truly safeguard the dignity and health of its elderly? Or it only operates the framework that falters.
On paper, Nigeria has scattered provisions. The National Health Act of 2014 promises essential services, but speaks no clear language of ageing. The Constitution guarantees life and dignity, yet remains mute on geriatric care. A National Policy on Ageing was birthed in 2021, but it lies in policy cupboards, its teeth blunt against the hard rock of implementation. The measure of a nation is not how it treats the powerful, but how it embraces the powerless.
Nigeria, with its vast ageing population must ask: Why are our elders not explicitly named and protected in our laws? Why does their health remain charity instead of entitlement? In various hospitals, you will search in vain for specialized geriatric wings. The elderly shuffle between clinics not designed for their fragility. Insurance schemes exclude them at the very stage they need it most, and in the silence of neglect, rights become riddles that never find answers.
The reality is stark as there are no sincerely defined legal enforcement mechanisms to hold caregivers or institutions accountable when elders are abandoned or maltreated. Pensioners and retirees are left to barter dignity for survival, waiting months for stipends that barely cover food, let alone medical care. We live in a society that too often sees the elderly as a burden instead of custodians of wisdom. These are the gaps that Nigeria's policies dare to ignore. To truly protect the vulnerable, Nigeria must not stop at partial integration.
We must expand the scope of integration to also include non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and dementia which silently devastate the poor and elderly. Let us take notes from other shores where some form of structures are already put in place for the elders for humanity's sake. Elsewhere, the law bends its shield towards the aged. In South Africa for example, the constitution speaks boldly of social protection and healthcare rights. Also in the United Kingdom, the NHS guarantees access, and its anti-discrimination laws forbid neglect on the grounds of age.
The road to reform simply imply that we must rise to demand a Geriatric Care Act that speaks the language of clarity and enforcement, an expansion of the health insurance coverage to include all Nigerians above 65yrs without loopholes, introduction of rights awareness campaign so that no elder dies ignorant of their entitlements, and a substantial partnerships between the civil society, faith bodies, and the press, to keep the ageing policy alive in practice and not just in paper alone, which will stitch the broken walls into one shelter for all too stand.
The nation’s litmus test should neither be a measure of a society’s ignorance, nor how it treats the strong, but how it shields the frail. Nigeria must remember: our elders are not relics to be displayed in memory, but living scrolls of history that deserve care, dignity, and justice. A nation that forgets its elders writes its obituary in advance. For the wrinkles on their faces are not blemishes but signatures of survival; their health is not a favour, but a right. To neglect them is not simply a policy lapse, it is a moral failure, and a wound to our collective soul.
Vulnerability demands justice because the challenges the elderly face are barriers beyond biology. Stigma that keeps them from seeking care, poverty that makes hospital bills heavier than their illness, and their geographical location that puts clinics out of their reach. Without integrated services, people are forced to navigate a labyrinth where each door leads to another queue, another cost, another indignity.
There should be standard programs that train health care workers to deliver multi-service care at every contact point. When God blesses you with extraordinary and professional health care providers, then you will understand what it means to age gracefully in your lifetime.
William Z. Bozimo
Veteran Journalist | Columnist | National Memory Keeper
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