Nigeria, July 3 -- Illegal fees and transactions are amongst the most popular forms of corruption in public hospitals in Abuja, a survey has found, describing the trend as the lubricant that helps ease access to care.

The recently released researched by Tap Initiative for Citizens Development in collaboration with Dataphyte found that health administrators in hospitals in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) collect payments for services that are ordinarily meant to be free as well as tips for special favours from patients who are trying to speed up access to care.

The research listed the illegal transactions to include payments for bed space, consultancy fee, laboratory fees and tips for the "movement of files".

Payments for such servi...