Catholic network of nearly 700 schools and 500+ health facilities

Caritas Nigeria, the development agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria, says the Church's network includes more than 500 health facilities and close to 700 schools.

The Catholic Church is one of the oldest providers of formal education and health care in Nigeria. Its first standard hospital is traced to 1895 in Abeokuta, before Nigeria was unified as a country. Its development agency, the Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria (Caritas Nigeria), was set up by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria in 2010. It works across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory through around 60 diocesan offices. On its Caritas Internationalis country page, the agency says it delivers projects through more than 500 Catholic health facilities and close to 700 schools nationwide. These facilities often sit in rural, riverine and other hard-to-reach communities. The numbers have changed over time and depend on what is counted. Caritas Nigeria's 2015 annual report gave 1,384 health facilities and 375 schools, while a 2020 report from the Church's national health unit counted more than 440 health facilities. These differences probably reflect varying definitions, such as whether small clinics, training institutions or school types are included, so no single figure should be treated as a full census. Many Catholic schools taken over by state governments in the 1970s have since been returned to dioceses, which also shifts the totals. The figure of close to 700 schools is higher than the commonly quoted 400, but it remains an approximate self-reported total, not an audited count.