Dayo Adu, the inaugural chairman of the Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals Law Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Business Law (NBA-SBL), sits at the intersection of policy, regulation, and practice. He is also the managing partner of Moroom Africa, a leading Pan-African law firm advising multinational corporations, healthcare providers, and life sciences companies across the continent. In this exclusive interview with INIOBONG IWOK, Adu spoke candidly on the priorities of the NBA-SBL Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Committee, the legal and regulatory bottlenecks slowing sector growth, and what must be done to reposition Nigeria’s health system. Excerpts:
As Chairman of the NBA-SBL Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Committee, what priorities are you pushing this year?
As Chairman of the NBA-SBL Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Committee, under the able leadership of the Chairperson of the NBA-SBL, Ozofu ‘Latunde Ogiemudia our priorities this year are firmly focused on moving the conversation from commentary to concrete and solution-driven impact.
Drawing from our 2026 programming agenda, we are prioritising healthcare system reform, stronger pharmaceutical regulation, and accountability in service delivery, particularly around issues such as medical negligence and patient safety.
A key focus is elevating national discourse on healthcare delivery and pharmaceutical governance by convening senior public- and private-sector decision-makers through structured engagements, including a National Health and Pharmaceutical Summit and targeted policy webinars.
We are also intent on strengthening the NBA-SBL’s visibility and relevance in health sector reform by positioning the legal profession as a credible convener and policy influencer.
Importantly, our work this year is geared towards generating actionable policy outcomes, not just dialogue. This includes engaging regulators, operators, and development stakeholders to address systemic challenges such as weak regulation, financing constraints, workforce attrition, and declining public trust.
Ultimately, the Committee’s priority is to ensure that healthcare and pharmaceutical law serves as a practical tool for reform, accountability, and improved outcomes for both providers and patients across Nigeria.
Nigeria’s health sector is facing multiple challenges, from incessant strike of health professionals to infrastructural gap, poor funding. What can be done to reposition the sector?
Repositioning Nigeria’s health sector requires moving from fragmented, reactive interventions to system-wide reform anchored on governance, financing, and accountability.
First, health workforce stability must be prioritised. Recurrent strikes are symptoms of deeper issues, poor remuneration structures, unclear career progression, unsafe working conditions, and weak social dialogue.
Government must institutionalise structured engagement with health professional bodies, backed by enforceable collective agreements and predictable funding.
The integration of states like Lagos into the National Health Workforce Registry is a critical step, as real-time data allows for better planning, equitable deployment, and targeted incentives to address workforce gaps.
Second, sustainable financing is non-negotiable. While increased allocations, such as the N32.8 billion Basic Health Care Provision Fund releases, the proposed N42.18 billion for vulnerable populations, and mandatory national health insurance, are encouraging, funding must translate into outcomes.
This requires strengthening purchasing systems, enforcing performance-based disbursement, and improving last- mile delivery. The National Health Insurance Authority’s reforms to reduce out-of- pocket spending and sanction erring providers show that financing and accountability must go hand in hand.
Third, infrastructure investments must be holistic. Building new Primary Health Cares and upgrading tertiary hospitals is important, but facilities cannot function without power, water, equipment, digital systems, and trained staff.
Initiatives like the N300 billion allocation for renewable power in hospitals and the task force on clinical governance and patient safety should be synchronised with infrastructure expansion to avoid underutilised assets.
Finally, digital transformation and governance reforms are essential enablers.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) scale-up in Lagos, digital medicines inventory systems, and the Enterprise Content Management platform at the Ministry of Health signal a shift toward data-driven decision-making.
However, digitalisation must be supported by strong data governance, cybersecurity safeguards, and capacity building. Ultimately, repositioning the sector requires treating healthcare not as a social expense, but as critical national infrastructure tied to productivity, security, and economic growth.
Nigeria’s healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors are heavily regulated. What do you see as the biggest legal bottlenecks slowing growth today?
The biggest legal bottlenecks are not the existence of regulation, but regulatory fragmentation, weak enforcement, and outdated legal frameworks that have not kept pace with sector evolution.
One major challenge is overlapping mandates and regulatory silos. Healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies often navigate multiple agencies with duplicative requirements, inconsistent timelines, and unclear accountability.
This increases compliance costs, delays approvals, and discourages investment, particularly in manufacturing, clinical trials, and digital health.
Secondly, implementation gaps undermine otherwise sound policies. For example, tax exemptions for pharmaceutical raw materials, incentives under the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain, and financing facilities are strong on paper, but businesses still face bureaucratic delays, discretionary enforcement, and uncertainty at ports and agencies.
Without clear operational guidelines and predictable enforcement, legal incentives lose their value.
Third, outdated or incomplete legal frameworks are slowing innovation. Areas such as organ donation and transplantation, digital health, e-pharmacy, clinical research, and patient safety require modern, coherent regulation.
The organ trafficking crisis highlights the danger of weak enforcement combined with the absence of functional donation frameworks.
Similarly, the growth of online drug sales has outpaced regulatory capacity, necessitating recent Pharmacists Council of Nigeria and National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) crackdowns.
Finally, regulatory capacity and coordination remain weak. Laws are only as effective as the institutions enforcing them.
Strengthening regulatory science, inspection capacity, data sharing, and inter-agency collaboration is critical, especially if Nigeria is to achieve its target of 70 percent local pharmaceutical production by 2030.
In summary, growth in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors will accelerate not by deregulation, but by smarter regulation, clearer laws, harmonised oversight, predictable enforcement, and institutions capable of supporting innovation while protecting public health.
How can regulatory agencies balance public safety with innovation, especially in biotech and digital health?
Regulatory agencies can strike the right balance by shifting from a purely control- oriented mindset to a risk-based, adaptive regulatory approach that protects patients while enabling innovation.
Firstly, regulators must differentiate between levels of risk. Not all biotech or digital health products pose the same threat to public safety.
Low-risk digital tools, such as wellness apps, EMR platforms, and supply-chain systems, should be subject to lighter, faster approval pathways, while higher-risk products like gene therapies, AI-driven diagnostics, and biologics receive deeper scientific and ethical scrutiny.
This allows innovation to move quickly without compromising safety.
Secondly, regulatory sandboxes and pilot frameworks should be institutionalised. Controlled testing environments enable innovators to deploy new technologies under regulator supervision, generate local evidence, and refine compliance before full-scale approval.
This is particularly important for digital health, AI-enabled tools, and clinical research, where technology often evolves faster than legislation.
Thirdly, regulatory capacity must keep pace with science. Investment in regulatory science, staff training, and digital tools is essential.
Initiatives such as strengthening clinical trial capacity for sickle cell disease and upgrading NAFDAC’s digital monitoring systems are positive steps, but they must be scaled. Regulators need the technical expertise to evaluate complex products without defaulting to excessive caution.
Finally, early and continuous engagement with innovators is key. Clear guidance, pre-submission consultations, and transparent timelines reduce uncertainty and build trust.
When regulators act as partners in innovation, without compromising independence, public safety is strengthened, not weakened.
What key policy reforms would most improve investor confidence in Nigeria’s life sciences sector?
Investor confidence in Nigeria’s life sciences sector will rise when policy signals are clear, predictable, and consistently implemented.
First, policy stability and coherence are critical. Investors need assurance that incentives, such as tax exemptions on pharmaceutical raw materials, manufacturing support under the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain, and financing facilities, will be sustained across political cycles and implemented uniformly across agencies.
Secondly, streamlined regulatory processes would significantly lower entry barriers.
Harmonising approvals across health, trade, customs, and standards bodies, with defined timelines and digital tracking, would reduce delays and compliance risk.
A “one-stop” regulatory interface for life sciences investors would be transformative.
Third, stronger legal protections and enforcement mechanisms are essential. Clear rules on intellectual property protection, clinical trial governance, data protection, and dispute resolution give investors’ confidence that their assets and innovations are secure. Effective enforcement matters as much as the law itself.
Fourthly, infrastructure-linked policy reforms will drive confidence. Reliable power for hospitals and manufacturers, digital supply-chain systems, and skilled workforce pipelines, such as the Empower Academy Nigeria, signal that Nigeria is serious about long-term sector growth, not short-term gains.
Ultimately, investors are not deterred by regulation; they are deterred by uncertainty.
Consistent policy execution, capable institutions, and a credible commitment to quality and safety will position Nigeria as a competitive and trusted destination for life sciences investment in Africa.
How challenging is it for healthcare companies to engage expatriate professionals under Nigeria’s current immigration and employment laws?
Nigeria’s 2025 immigration reforms have made it more demanding, but more predictable, for healthcare companies to engage expatriate professionals.
The system has shifted from a paper based, informal processes to a structured, digital, and compliance-driven framework that requires early planning and careful execution.
A major change is the front-loading of immigration compliance. With the abolition of the Subject to Regularisation regime, expatriates must now enter Nigeria with full work and residence authorisation through the e-CERPAC system.
This places greater responsibility on healthcare employers to complete company registration, expatriate quota approvals, and documentation well ahead of recruitment timelines.
Healthcare companies must justify the need for foreign expertise and often demonstrate skills transfer plans. This is particularly challenging for highly specialised roles in areas such as biotech, clinical research, and digital health, where local capacity is still evolving but localisation expectations remain high.
Cost is another significant factor; revised fees have increased the financial burden of engaging foreign professionals. For private hospitals, healthtech startups, and research-focused companies, these higher compliance costs can affect hiring decisions and project viability.
Enforcement has also tightened considerably. Digital tracking through Landing and
Exit Cards, strict overstay penalties, and long-term entry bans heighten compliance risks for both expatriates and their employers.
Overall, while Nigeria’s current immigration and employment framework does not prevent healthcare companies from engaging expatriate professionals, it demands strong governance, higher costs, and meticulous compliance.
Companies that plan early and align their workforce strategy with the new rules can still operate effectively, but ad hoc or poorly coordinated arrangements now carry significant legal and operational risk.
You’ve advised extensively on workforce structuring—what are the key labour law risks in healthcare organisations?
Healthcare organisations face its own mix of labour law risks because of the sector’s highly regulated, people-intensive, and safety-critical nature. From experience advising on workforce structuring, the key risks typically fall into the following areas: Firstly, non-compliance with working time, remuneration, and welfare standards is common.
Long shifts, on-call duties, and emergency work can easily lead to breaches of overtime rules, rest periods, and workplace health and safety obligations. In healthcare, fatigue is not only a labour law issue but also a patient safety risk, increasing potential liability.
Secondly, poorly structured termination and disciplinary processes pose significant exposure. Healthcare organisations often need to act quickly in cases involving misconduct, incompetence, or patient safety concerns.
However, failure to follow due process, fair hearing requirements, and contractual or statutory procedures can result in wrongful termination claims, reinstatement orders, or reputational damage.
Thirdly, regulatory and licensing-linked employment risks are critical. Employing practitioners without valid professional licences or practising certificates can attract sanctions from regulators and expose the organisation to civil and criminal liability.
Finally, data protection and confidentiality risks in employment are increasingly significant. Healthcare employers handle sensitive patient data and employee health information.
Inadequate controls, weak policies, or employee misuse of data can lead to regulatory penalties and employment disputes.
You’ve resolved many disputes without litigation—why is alternative dispute resolution particularly important in healthcare?
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is especially important in healthcare because disputes in this sector are high-stakes, time-sensitive, and deeply human. Litigation is often slow, adversarial, and expensive, and in healthcare, those delays can worsen outcomes, erode trust, and disrupt service delivery.
Healthcare disputes, whether arising from medical negligence claims, insurance reimbursement issues, professional misconduct, or contractual disagreements, often involve ongoing relationships between patients, providers, insurers, and regulators.
ADR mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration allow parties to resolve conflicts in a way that preserves these relationships and enables continuity of care.
ADR also promotes confidentiality and institutional learning. Unlike court proceedings, ADR creates space for candid discussion, early apologies where appropriate, and system-level fixes without reputational damage.
This is critical in medical negligence matters, where the goal should be patient safety and quality improvement, not just fault-finding.
Importantly, ADR reduces the burden on already overstretched courts and healthcare institutions.
How developed is medical liability law in Nigeria, and does it sufficiently protect patients and providers?
Medical liability law in Nigeria is moderately developed. It is primarily based on common law principles of negligence, supported by statutes such as the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act, the National Health Act, and professional codes of ethics.
Constitutional rights, including the right to life and dignity, can also underpin claims in cases of gross negligence. Courts generally require proof of duty, breach, causation, and damage, while giving medical professionals some leeway if they follow accepted professional standards.
While patients have legal avenues to seek redress through civil litigation, regulatory complaints to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, or, in extreme cases, criminal prosecution, practical challenges remain.
Many patients are unaware of their rights, medical records are often poorly maintained, and access to expert testimony is limited, making it difficult to prove claims.
High-profile cases have increased public awareness and advocacy for patient safety but underreporting and enforcement gaps persist.
For healthcare providers, the law acknowledges compliance with accepted medical standards. However, regulatory inconsistencies and limited case law create uncertainty and reputational risk.
Overall, Nigerian medical liability law provides basic protection for both patients and providers, but stronger enforcement, clearer guidance, and broader awareness are needed to ensure the system effectively safeguards patient rights and supports professional practice.
What legal issues should pharmaceutical companies consider when entering the Nigerian market?
Pharmaceutical companies entering the Nigerian market must navigate a complex legal and regulatory landscape. First, they must obtain regulatory approval from the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), ensuring compliance with product safety, quality, labelling, and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards.
Compliance with other laws, including the Food, Drugs and Related Products Act, environmental regulations, employment laws, and ethical marketing rules set by the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), is also critical.
Intellectual property protection is another key consideration. Companies should secure patents, trademarks, and data exclusivity under Nigerian law to prevent counterfeiting and generic competition. Licensing agreements, technology transfers, and confidentiality arrangements must also be carefully structured to safeguard proprietary products and know-how.
Distribution, pricing, and liability issues also require attention, including clear agreements with distributors, risk management strategies, and insurance coverage to mitigate potential claims arising from defective drugs or adverse effects.
Clinical trials must follow National Health Research Ethics Committee (NHREC) guidelines, and local partnerships often require robust contractual protections.
Additionally, pharmaceutical companies must consider immigration, business and work permit requirements for foreign entities and staff. This includes securing the appropriate business permits, visas, expatriate quotas, and residence permit through the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), as well as compliance with local labour laws regarding foreign employment.
Ensuring all foreign personnel are legally authorised to work in Nigeria is essential to avoid regulatory penalties and operational disruptions.
Overall, a holistic legal strategy covering regulatory, IP, liability, and immigration compliance is crucial for successfully entering and operating in Nigeria’s pharmaceutical market.
