The video is only a few seconds long. But it was enough to know what was happening.
Elizabeth Oloruntola, known to millions as Zita from Big Brother Naija Season 10, was seen using a nebuliser. Her breathing is laboured and her voice is cracking as she tries to speak while tears run down her face.
Then she asks a question that should not need to be asked: why is there no ambulance in this country? 
What Happened
Zita had a respiratory attack. Based on the nebuliser and her description, fans and medical observers have suggested it was likely an asthma-related episode.
She lives alone. In that moment of emergency, with her airways closing and panic setting in, there was no ambulance to call. No siren to wait for. No trained paramedic knocking on her door.
So she did what millions of Nigerians have learned to do. She picked up her phone and booked a ride.
Not a private medical transport. Not a friend with a car. A stranger’s vehicle. Through an app. While struggling to breathe.
She explained that the car had no air conditioning. In Lagos heat. During a respiratory attack. She gasped for air in the backseat of a stranger’s car, alone, terrified, and entirely failed by a system that was supposed to catch her.
One commenter, @anthea_o, summed it up: “Perhaps she had a respiratory attack, and there was no active ambulance or emergency service, and she lives alone, so in that moment of emergency, she had to literally book a ride herself to the hospital all alone; quite sad.”
‘Quite sad’ is an understatement. It is a national disgrace.
The System That Wasn’t There
Zita is not the first Nigerian to face this. She will not be the last.
According to a Q1 2026 report by Salvus Emergency, only seven per cent of emergency cases in Nigeria are handled by public ambulances. That number is staggering when you think about it. Ninety-three per cent of emergencies are managed through informal means.
Forty-seven per cent of patients arrive at hospitals via commercial buses. Thirty-one per cent come in private vehicles or walk in. Private ambulance services handle fifteen per cent. The public system? Seven.
The Lagos State Ambulance Service, known as LASAMBUS, once worked. During the Fashola and Ambode years, it was a model. Ambulances were stationed across the state. They had oxygen, monitors, and trained staff. Response times were improving. Lives were saved.
Then maintenance died. Priorities shifted. Today, the average emergency response time in Lagos is 17 minutes, more than double the World Health Organization’s recommended eight-minute standard. In rural areas, delays can stretch beyond two hours.
Seventeen minutes when you cannot breathe is an eternity. It is also a fantasy, because that seventeen-minute average assumes an ambulance actually comes. For Zita, none came at all.
The Human Cost of Broken Infrastructure
The World Health Organization has noted that Nigeria’s essential health service coverage remains “very limited”, with specialist and emergency services insufficient and many communities lacking ambulance services and prehospital care entirely.
What does that look like on the ground? It looks like Zita. It looks like families carrying dying relatives in wheelbarrows. It looks like accident victims loaded into commercial buses with bleeding wounds. It looks like a country where calling 112, the national emergency number, is still a gamble because the system is fragmented, coordination is poor, and awareness of the number remains low.
Nigeria records over six million medical emergencies every year. The National Emergency Medical Services and Ambulance System covers less than 0.2 per cent of them.
Let that sink in. Six million emergencies. The official system touches effectively none of them.
What Zita’s Video Exposed
Zita is a public figure. She has a platform. She has fans who rallied around her, flooding social media with prayers and well-wishes.
But her video was not a cry for sympathy. It was a cry of frustration. She is not asking for prayers. She is asking why she had to book a stranger’s car while she could not breathe.
The commenters understood. “She had an asthmatic attack, and she had to book a ride to the hospital because there was no ambulance, and the car had no air conditioning, so she was gasping for air on the way to the hospital,” one person wrote.
That is not a story about a celebrity. That is a story about every Nigerian who has ever faced an emergency alone. Zita just happened to have a phone and a following.
The Bigger Picture
The federal government is aware. There have been initiatives. The National Emergency Medical Services and Ambulance System (NEMSAS) was established to coordinate emergency response nationwide. The government has even opened discussions with Airbus to develop air ambulance services.
States like Kwara are in the process of onboarding into NEMSAS. The government has expanded emergency medical systems to 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
But progress is slow. Coverage remains thin. And for every Zita who survived to tell the story, there are countless others who did not.
As a public health physician noted in a recent analysis, the real problem is not whether Nigerian clinicians know what to do. It is reliability. In too many emergencies, the system fails within the first hour, the period in which rapid action makes the difference between life and death.
SEE ALSO: Where to Audition for BBNaija Season 11
Bottom Line
Zita is reportedly recovering. Fans have expressed relief and continued prayers. But the question she asked while struggling to breathe remains unanswered.
Why is there no ambulance in this country?
Not for Zita. Not for the mother in labour. Not for the accident victim on the highway. Not for the millions who face emergencies alone every year.
She had to book a ride. In a stranger’s car. While she could not breathe.
That is not healthcare. That is survival. And survival should not be this hard.
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