For decades, Nigeria’s healthcare system has carried the weight of a growing population without a matching expansion in infrastructure and funding.
Public hospitals, envisioned as the backbone of care delivery, have struggled to meet expectations.
Nigeria’s healthcare system has, in many ways, reinvented itself, from overcrowded public wards to the steady rise of private medical giants.
According to data by WHO, the private sector provides close to 60% of health service delivery, in spite owning an estimated 30% of health facilities.
These institutions did not emerge in isolation. They are responses to gaps, to crises filled by a mix of entrepreneurs, medical professionals, and institutional investors who have built facilities that now rival international standards.
Some were established by practitioners who had seen advanced systems abroad and returned determined to replicate them locally. Others emerged from business minds that recognized healthcare as both a necessity and a viable long-term investment.
This feature article explores Nigeria’s largest private hospitals based on scale of operations, highlighting the individuals and organisations behind them, as well as the range of specialist care they provide.
Here are the owners of the largest hospitals in Nigeria by bed capacity.
- Dr. Felix Ogedegbe, Founder
Cedarcrest Hospitals is a private multi-speciality hospital group in Nigeria, founded in Abuja in 2008 and led by Dr. Felix Ogedegbe, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and healthcare entrepreneur who serves as Medical Director and CEO.
Dr. Ogedegbe trained as a medical doctor at the University of Benin and completed his orthopaedic residency at the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, Lagos.
He further trained internationally at Charité Hospital in Berlin and Newham University Hospital in London. His early career included service in the Nigerian Army, where he worked as an orthopaedic surgeon before retiring as a Major.
He has spent over a decade building Cedarcrest into a structured hospital group, expanding from a specialised orthopaedic centre into a multi-location healthcare provider with facilities in Abuja, Lagos, and parts of Niger State.
Cedarcrest operates across multiple facilities with over 250-bed capacity across its network, including purpose-built centres in Abuja and Lagos designed for specialist and surgical care.
The hospital focuses strongly on orthopaedics and trauma care, including joint replacement, spine surgery, and reconstructive procedures, while also offering services in cardiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, and general surgery.
