Godman Akinlabi Is Taking Free Healthcare to 10,000 Nigerians Through UBOMI

For thousands of Nigerians, the cost of seeing a doctor, getting a diagnostic test or undergoing surgery can be enough to delay care. Pistis Foundation is responding to that gap by taking its UBOMI free medical and surgical outreach to more communities, with a target of reaching 10,000 people across Ibadan and Lagos in 2026.

Founded as the social intervention arm of The Elevation Church, Pistis Foundation has positioned healthcare access as one of its major areas of work. Its flagship UBOMI programme provides medical consultations, laboratory and diagnostic services, pharmaceutical support, dental and eye care, paediatric services and general and specialist surgical procedures at no cost to beneficiaries.

The 2026 edition marks an expansion of the programme. For the first time, UBOMI is taking the outreach to Ibadan, where it will run from September 21 to 25, before returning to Lagos from October 19 to 23. Together, the two locations are expected to serve up to 10,000 beneficiaries, described by the foundation as the largest combined reach in the programme’s history.

Godman Akinlabi, founder and Board Chair of Pistis Foundation and Global Lead Pastor of The Elevation Church, says the initiative is driven by a simple concern: healthcare should not become inaccessible because someone cannot afford it or because adequate facilities are out of reach.

Through UBOMI, the foundation is attempting to take that principle beyond the church and directly into communities where financial and infrastructure barriers can prevent people from getting treatment.

The programme has already operated at considerable scale. Since its inception, UBOMI has delivered 48,706 verified medical interventions, with the foundation reporting a 99 per cent surgical success rate.

Those interventions have included surgeries, consultations, eye care, dental procedures, laboratory investigations, medications and other forms of medical support. In its 2025 programme alone, the foundation reported 17,416 free medical interventions for 5,635 beneficiaries, including 121 surgeries and more than 1,800 consultations.

The numbers point to an important feature of UBOMI: it is not designed solely as a one-day screening exercise. The programme combines preventive care with treatment and surgery, while also providing referrals and post-outreach support where required.

That breadth is particularly important for people who may enter the programme with a relatively simple health concern but discover that they need more extensive care. Eye conditions, dental problems, chronic illnesses and surgical needs can all become significantly more difficult to manage when treatment is delayed because of cost.

UBOMI relies heavily on partnerships to deliver that range of services. The 2026 programme is being implemented with The Elevation Church in Ibadan and Lagos, Pro-Health International as the technical partner, and Zenithcare Hospital in Oyo State and Hospital for Trauma and Surgery in Lagos as medical institutional partners.

Medical and non-medical volunteers are also central to the model. The foundation says more than 200 volunteers from Nigeria and beyond contribute to its outreaches each year, providing the human capacity needed to deliver services at scale.

For Leonard F. Thomas, Executive Director of Pistis Foundation, the expansion to Ibadan is about more than increasing the number of people reached. He has emphasised that behind the programme’s 10,000-person target are individual patients, families and stories.

That perspective captures what makes the UBOMI model significant. A statistic such as 48,706 interventions can communicate scale, but each intervention represents someone who was able to receive a consultation, medication, diagnostic service or procedure without having to carry the full financial burden.

As UBOMI expands to two cities in 2026, Pistis Foundation is testing what is possible when nonprofit organisations, healthcare professionals, hospitals, volunteers and other partners combine their resources around a single objective: making essential healthcare available to people who might otherwise struggle to access it.

The larger challenge, however, remains bigger than any single outreach. Free medical missions can provide immediate relief, but the continuing demand for them also highlights the deeper gaps in healthcare access that communities across Nigeria still face.

For Akinlabi and the team behind Pistis Foundation, UBOMI is one way of responding — one patient, one procedure and one community at a time.