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In a decisive move to strengthen Nigeria’s health insurance ecosystem through data intelligence and service excellence, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has entered into two landmark Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) – one with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the other with the SERVICOM Office.
Signed on October 8, 2025, in Abuja, the agreements represent major milestones in institutional collaboration, designed to enhance data-driven decision-making, accountability, and citizen-centred service delivery. Together, these partnerships reflect a bold stride toward the country’s ambition of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) – ensuring that every Nigerian has equitable access to quality healthcare without financial hardship.
Building an Evidence-Based Health System
Through its partnership with the National Bureau of Statistics, the NHIA is set to benefit from a more robust and integrated data architecture that will enable the accurate measurement of health insurance coverage, utilisation, and performance.
Under the terms of the MoU, both institutions will collaborate on data sharing and integration, joint research, capacity building, and the development of standardised health indicators to strengthen policy design, monitoring, and evaluation across Nigeria’s healthcare landscape. The collaboration is expected to close existing data gaps, improve coordination, and reinforce the use of reliable statistics in health sector planning and reporting.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Kelechi Ohiri, director general of the NHIA, emphasised the centrality of accurate data to achieving Universal Health Coverage.
“It is often said that anything that matters is measured and anything that is measured matters. The work that we do in NHIA is critical because it affects lives and every household deeply. Our mission is to bring Nigerians out of health poverty and ensure that they have financial access to health. It is therefore imperative that we have credible frameworks for not just assessing the impact of what we’re doing on the lives of the average Nigerian, but also ensuring that this is consistently measured and brought to the fore in our national development discourse.”
In his remarks, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, statistician-general and CEO of the National Bureau of Statistics highlighted the significance of the collaboration in advancing national health policy.
“This integration will allow us to measure the true impact of health insurance on equity, poverty reduction, and accessibility to affordable and quality health for Nigerian citizens. Beyond that, we will work together to advance research analysis that will help us achieve our shared mandate.”
He further reaffirmed the Bureau’s commitment to ethical standards and data integrity:
“As the custodian of official statistics, NBS reaffirms its unwavering commitment to data privacy, confidentiality, and integrity throughout this collaboration. We adhere to the highest ethical and statistical standards, guaranteeing that the public and our development partners can trust the resulting figures.”
Redefining Service Excellence Through SERVICOM
While the NBS partnership focuses on data, the MoU with SERVICOM places equal emphasis on the human experience of healthcare – ensuring that enrollees of the NHIA and patients in partner facilities receive transparent, responsive, and dignified service.
The collaboration seeks to institutionalise clear service delivery standards, strengthen complaints and feedback management systems, and promote continuous improvement through joint monitoring and capacity-building initiatives. SERVICOM will also support NHIA in developing and enforcing service charters that define citizens’ rights and service expectations within the health insurance ecosystem.
Speaking at the event, Ohiri highlighted the significance of the timing – coinciding with Customer Service Week – and underscored the citizen-first philosophy driving NHIA’s reform agenda:
“For NHIA, our role is to ensure financial access to health care. Why is this very important to us? Because every system we build is not about how big the hospitals are, how many drugs we procure, or how large our budget is. Ultimately, the proof of a successful healthcare system is how the citizen is impacted – the quality of care and service that that citizen enjoys. That’s why at NHIA, our strategy begins with the enrollee first. The Nigerian citizen must be at the heart of every system we design, and that means the services we provide must be of good quality.”
Anthony Oshin, national coordinator of SERVICOM, affirmed his agency’s long-term commitment to the partnership, emphasising that it is not a one-off gesture but a sustained alliance for systemic improvement:
“Director General, sir, I also wish to affirm that the partnership we are formalising today is not just a symbolic gesture, but a meaningful alliance that we intend to nurture and sustain for the long term. We are confident that this collaboration will take both our institutions to greater heights and deliver tangible benefits to the citizens we serve.”
Driving Nigeria’s Renewed Hope Agenda
Both MoUs mirror the practical expression of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which prioritizes social protection, quality healthcare access, and improved public sector performance. By combining NBS’s data intelligence with SERVICOM’s service excellence framework, NHIA is reinforcing the government’s broader vision of a transparent, efficient, and citizen-focused public service.
The partnerships are expected to catalyse institutional reforms that ensure Nigerians not only gain access to health insurance but also experience efficient, transparent, and responsive service delivery. They also align with global best practices in health governance – where data accuracy, accountability, and user experience form the tripod for sustainable universal health systems.
A Future of Measured Impact and Meaningful Service
Together, the collaborations represent a strategic convergence of evidence and empathy – ensuring that policies are data-informed and that service delivery remains humane, reliable, and citizen-oriented.
For Ohiri, the partnerships reaffirm NHIA’s determination to make health insurance not just a policy instrument, but a promise fulfilled. By fusing NBS’s analytical rigour with SERVICOM’s service standards, NHIA is setting a new national benchmark for how institutions can work together to deliver on the fundamental right to health.
As Nigeria moves toward the next phase of its health reform journey, these agreements provide the scaffolding for a system where data tells the truth, citizens are treated with dignity, and every health interaction reflects the government’s renewed commitment to the wellbeing of its people.
