The Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA) 2025 is emerging more than an industry reform, but driving generational shift that was lost in the past.
It confronts years of low awareness and weak insurance culture by placing protection at the heart of everyday Nigerian life.
In doing so, it shapes the present for today’s adults and secures the future for those just learning how the world works.
While Obafemi Azeez was born in 1997, the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), a regulatory authority for insurance regulation in Nigeria was also established.
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today, Azeez is 29 years old and chances are high that he has never heard of NAICOM, does not fully understand what insurance means, and has never held an insurance policy.
This is not because of carelessness, but because insurance has largely existed outside his lived experience, and this cut across people of this and below generation.
Fast forward to 2007, when Nigeria last carried out a major insurance recapitalisation exercise, our 29-year-old Azeez was only 10 then, probably just stepping into junior secondary school.
He was more concerned about homework and friendships than policies, premiums, or protection from insurance. Understandably, insurance never became part of their worldview, and this gap has followed them into adulthood.
today, when news breaks of lives lost to fire outbreaks, like the recent fire outbreak that took lives and properties at Lagos Island; flooding, building collapses, and other devastating incidents, confusion often follows.
Questions linger. Why wasn’t anything done? Why is help always reactive? Why do victims end up appealing for public donations? The truth is simple and painful, many Nigerians were never brought into the insurance conversation early enough.
This is where the NIIRA2025 effect comes in, according to Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon, deputy commissioner for Insurance, Finance and Administration.
“With the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Agenda 2025, the story begins to change. This reform is not just about policies and compliance; it is about people, generations, and awareness.”
Gam-Ikon said, the law seeks to ensure that today’s 29-year-olds are empowered to #BeInsured, #BeCounted, and #BeSafe, while today’s 10-year-olds grow up to #BeAware, #BeInformed, and #BeInsured.
According to him, through 13 compulsory classes of insurance, NIIRA 2025 aims to ensure that every Nigerian is protected by at least one insurance policy wherever life takes us.
Gam-Ikon said it could be at home, in schools, markets, offices, hotels, malls, motor parks, airports, hospitals, petrol stations, event centres, stadiums, cinemas, and all public spaces where we live, work, and gather. This is what transformation looks like, he stared.
Gam-Ikon stated, “The NIIRA2025 effect represents one of the greatest opportunities Nigeria has been offered to modernise not just its insurance industry, but its way of life.”
He said, many of the losses we suffer from unforeseen events already have solutions within insurance institutions; what has been missing is awareness, compliance, and trust.
“Imagine a Nigeria where no citizen leaves a public space only to be broken physically, emotionally, and financially by an accident, while a valid insurance policy could have restored dignity, confidence, and stability. That future is possible.”
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“History, they say, is someone’s story. today, we have the chance to create ours and to shape the stories of those coming behind us.”
By choosing to comply with NIIRA2025, insuring our public spaces, and intentionally teaching young Nigerians between the ages of 10 and 30 what insurance truly means, we invest in a safer and stronger future.
“Insurance is not just a policy; it is an economic stabiliser, a promise of protection, and peace of mind. Let us choose to tell a better story, one where Nigerians are protected, informed, and prepared, the deputy commissioner for Insurance said.
