Anthony Joshua and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie went through terrible experiences; now a young singer has died. The events are all linked

The death from a snakebite of singer Ifunanya Nwangene in an Abuja hospital last Saturday, allegedly after a frantic and failed search for antivenom, sent a familiar shudder through Nigeria. It was a profoundly personal tragedy, yet it felt grimly systemic. Within days, it became part of a devastating triad of events framing a national crisis. A few weeks before, the country had grappled with the death of novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s young son in a premium private hospital in Lagos, amid allegations of negligence. Just before that, there were the images of boxer Anthony Joshua, after a serious car crash near Lagos, being helped by bystanders with no ambulance or emergency service in sight.

A cobra in an upmarket apartment, a fatal error in a high-end facility, a wrecked car on the roadside. These seem like disconnected misfortunes: in truth, they are interconnected. They represent a diagnostic map of a health system in collapse, a system where survival is determined by a lethal lottery of geography, wealth, and sheer chance.