Our Irish-born foundress, Mother Mary Martin, was actually in Nigeria when she made her first profession of religious vows, which marks the foundation of MMM, back in 1937. In the years since then MMMs have seen many developments and changes in Nigeria.

Nigeria
Land:	910,768 sq km
Coastline:	853 km
Population:	149,229,090 (July 2009 estimate)
Age Structure:	0-14 years: 41.5% 15-64 years: 55.5% 65 years and over: 3.1% (2009 estimate)
Life Expectancy:	male: 46.16 years female: 47.76 years
Infant Mortality Rate: 94.35 deaths/1,000 live births
People living with HIV/AIDS: 2.6 million (2007 estimate)
Literacy:	Total population: 68% male: 75.7% female: 60.6% (2003 estimate)
National Holiday: Independence Day, (National Day) 1 October (1960)
From - World Factbook 2009

Today we are involved in health care at nine different locations. We have three hospitals. One is at Eleta in the city of Ibadan in Oyo State. Another is at Urua Akpan in the State of Akwa Ibom. The third is at Mile Four, just outside Abakaliki, in Ebonyi State.

At Itam, which is also in the State of Akwa Ibom, we have the Family Life Center, where Sister Ann Ward pioneered the cure of women suffering from vesico-vaginal fistula. This is a residential Unit, as the cure usually requires several separate surgical interventions. Today, another MMM surgeon, Sister Mary Molloy, is in charge at Itam.

Elsewhere we are involved in community based health care, training of Traditional Birth Attendants, control of diseases such as TB, leprosy, measles and others to which the population is particularly vulnerable. As in all countries, a considerable amount of effort is devoted to the effects of the AIDS pandemic.

We have a multi-cultural Novitiate at Ibadan. Many professed MMM Sisters who come from Nigeria are working as missionaries in other countries.

Back in 1921, when our foundress was a lay missionary, she took a canoe up the Cross River from Calabar and then trekked on foot the rest of the hundred-mile journey to Onitsha, she saw the teeming multitudes of people without health care. That inspired her to return to her home in Ireland and look for companions who could help her address the needs.

Many decades later, her inspiration is still with us as we labor in places as far-flung as the remote village of Fuka among the nomadic Fulani herdsmen, to the city of Benin where we try to prevent young women from being lured overseas to become victims of human trafficking. Our hospitals at Eleta on the outskirts of the city of Ibadan, at Mile Four near Abakaliki and in Urua Akpan further south, take a lot of funding. Likewise our specialist unit for the repair of obstetric fistula at Itam in the south-east.