…As Tinubu’s executive order on pharma cuts production cost by 12%
Ineffective policies, absence of data and staff welfare gaps are hindering Nigeria’s health sector reforms, leading to outcomes that impact the lives of citizens negatively.
At the 2025 health conference convened by BusinessDay in Abuja on Thursday themed, ‘Bridging the Gap: Advancing Equitable and Affordable Access to Healthcare in Nigeria,’ health professionals and other analysts called on the federal government to evolve policies that are actionable to tackle inequalities and the high cost of health services in Nigeria.
Brian Deaver, chief executive officer of Afreximbank-backed African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE), said Nigeria and Africa at large will continue to struggle to deliver healthcare for citizens if health professionals remain unappreciated and burned-out.
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Deaver said governments must begin to create systems that would enable health workers to thrive, stressing that only a healthier population will fuel a healthier economy.
The AMCE CEO said, “Burned-out staff struggle to deliver compassionate care,” he said.
“Unsupported team members will not innovate, and unappreciated professionals will not stay. If we want a system that heals, we must start by building environments where caregivers thrive. So, when we redefine healthcare in Nigeria and West Africa, let us redefine leadership, not just as strategy and funding but as a commitment to investing in leadership,” he noted.
“When my healthcare team members feel valued, recognised, developed and cared for, then I do not have to worry about patients being treated with dignity and respect,” he further said.
The AMCE CEO expressed concerns that in too many facilities, patients are treated as cases to be managed, not human beings to be served, with their dignity compromised, and their voices are often silenced.
He said Nigeria and her counterparts must shift from what’s available to what’s possible, from good enough to excellence, from competition to collaboration, and from merely treating illness to creating health.
“We are not in the business of market share. We are in the business of saving lives. No single hospital, no matter how well funded or well equipped, can meet the needs of 200 million Nigerians, let alone 400 million West Africans. What we need is collaboration over competition,” he stressed.
He also said that lack of data is a critical challenge holding Nigeria back from reforming or leading in the delivery of quality and accessible health care.
“We cannot scale what we cannot track. And we cannot respond if we cannot predict. Data is not paperwork.
It is power. If we want to truly lead, we must embrace one of the most underutilised tools in African health care. And that is data,” he explained.
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Expensive healthcare system
Mustapha Zakari, executive vice chairman of Masslife Healthcare Limited, who spoke during a panel session, decried that more than half of the Nigerian population are multidimensionally poor and unable to afford healthcare when required.
According to him, the government and private sector players in the sector have continued to finance the supply side of healthcare by building facilities.
“We budget for building hospitals, training of doctors, manufacturing pharmaceuticals but utilisation is low because the people who need them cannot afford them. We are focusing on supply and do nothing about to aid demand.
“There is a need for the government to provide financial incentive to households to increase the purchasing power of the people so that they can access healthcare. More than half of Nigerians are high in multidimensional poverty and need support,” Zakari said.
Speaking on the healthcare regulatory landscape, Chineye Ajayi, legal counsel at Olaniwun Ajayi LP, representing Ibi Ogunbiyi, a partner at the firm, decried the poor implementation of existing drug laws such as the Counterfeit and Fake Drugs and Unwholesome Processed Foods Act of 2004.
“Laws exist, but without proper enforcement, they become ineffective. We hear of raids and arrests, like the recent one in Idumota Market in Lagos, but the public rarely sees the outcome. Until offenders are consistently penalised and made examples of, fake drug operations will persist,” Ajayi said.
She advocated for a comprehensive public orientation strategy to raise awareness about the dangers of counterfeit drugs. According to her, policy incentives and public education, combined with consistent enforcement, can drive behavioural change and reduce harmful practices in the sector.
In his remarks, Adetolu Ademujimi, technical adviser and health financing officer at APIN Public Health Initiatives, emphasised the need to rethink Nigeria’s approach to healthcare delivery.
Ademujimi urged regulatory agencies to focus more on frontline outlets used by ordinary Nigerians, and called for strategic collaborations between federal and state agencies to strengthen governance and improve health outcomes.
He cited personal observations of unsafe and unsupervised drug practices in informal drug outlets in Abuja, warning that over 80 percent of Nigerians rely on such unregulated sources for primary care.
“These unregistered patent medicine vendors are performing medical procedures, administering IVs, and even carrying out abortions without oversight. Who is regulating them?
“We often focus too much on the supply side, hospitals and infrastructure while neglecting demand-side realities,” Ademujimi said.
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Tinubu’s executive order cuts drug production cost by 12%
Meanwhile, Iziaq Salako, minister of state for Health, said President Tinubu’s executive order on the pharmaceutical industry has succeeded in reducing production costs by 12 percent.
Tinubu, had in June 2024, signed an executive order aimed at eliminating tariffs, excise duties, and value added tax (VAT) on specialised machinery, equipment, and raw materials for pharmaceuticals. The goal was to stimulate local production of essential healthcare products such as syringes, biologicals, and medical textiles, thereby reducing production costs and making medicines more affordable.
The minister said that 87 local manufacturers are directly benefiting from incentives spread across a total of almost 1,000 harmonised system codes as a result of the implementation of the order.
“The feedback from our local manufacturers suggest that the implementation of the presidential order has resulted in about 12 percent reduction in the cost of production,” the minister said.
He further said the order, which is part of the broader Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain (PVAC), is revitalising local manufacturing, leading to the emergence of pharmaceutical and diagnostic hubs .
He revealed that two Nigerian products attained the highly regarded World Healt\h Organization (WHO) qualification in less than a year, the first such achievement in West and Central Africa. He added that a local facility of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) was commissioned in Ogun State few months ago, second of such contextual specification in South Saharan Africa.
“Yet another local manufacturer is set to commission Africa’s first contextual active pharmaceutical ingredient factory,” he added.
