Inaugural Lecture

241st Inaugural Inaugural Lecture — Thursday 14 May 2026

Theme:

Bridging the Divide: The Pracademic’s Mandate in the Quest for Universal Health Coverage

At the top: a vast accumulation of health systems research, evidence, data, and academic knowledge — decades of work by scholars, practitioners, and institutions committed to understanding how healthcare can be made to work for everyone.

At the bottom: an urgent, undeniable societal need. Millions of Nigerians without financial protection. Communities where a single illness dismantles a household’s economic stability. A nation still navigating its path to Universal Health Coverage.

Between the two – the neck. Narrow. Resistant. Shaped not by a lack of evidence or a lack of need, but by political interests, unsustainable financing structures, and the uneven distribution of power that determines what gets implemented, what gets ignored, and who bears the cost of inaction.

This lecture is about that neck.

The Pracademic’s Mandate is the deliberate, disciplined act of stepping into that constriction – not as a passive observer, but as a policy architect. It calls for more than scholarship. It demands an understanding of political economy: the power structures that either clear the path for health reform or create the bottleneck that stalls it.

In this lecture, Professor Onoka draws on over two decades of clinical experience, academic research, and policy engagement to argue that Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria is not a distant aspiration. It is an achievable mandate — if we are honest about the systems, the financing, and the power dynamics that govern our health institutions.

“In the quest for UHC, we must understand the ‘Power’ — the political economy that either clears the path or creates the bottleneck in the hourglass of progress.”

RSVP / Media Accreditation