Funmi Ogundare
Stakeholders in the health sector have called for stronger taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) as part of efforts to curb the rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and generate additional domestic resources for healthcare.
They made the call Monday at a national stakeholders’ inception workshop themed: ‘Realising Health Taxes for Sustainable Health Financing and Curbing Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Nigeria’, in Abuja.
The stakeholders, comprising policymakers, legislators, development partners, civil society organisations, researchers and other health sector actors, said effective laws, policies, implementation and enforcement were required to make health taxation achieve its intended objectives.
The workshop was convened by Development Governance International (DGI) Consult in collaboration with the Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF) and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), with support from the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR).
The meeting built on evidence from previous health policy analysis for health taxes research and provided a platform for stakeholders to review Nigeria’s current health-tax landscape, identify immediate policy opportunities and agree on priority actions for advancing reforms.
It also marked the formal inauguration of the Health Tax Task Team (HTTT), a multi-stakeholder mechanism established to sustain coordination and action on priority health-tax reforms.
The task team is expected to support evidence generation, stakeholder engagement and advocacy, while promoting stronger implementation of health-tax policies.
Stakeholders noted that Nigeria is facing a growing burden of NCDs at a time when the country continues to grapple with inadequate health financing and the financial burden of healthcare on households.
They said taxes on tobacco, alcohol and SSBs could address both challenges by discouraging the consumption of products associated with preventable diseases while mobilising additional domestic resources for healthcare.
However, they observed that although Nigeria has introduced taxes on some of these products, gaps remain in tax rates and structures, implementation, enforcement and the utilisation of revenues for health.
The Principal Investigator of the project and Director-General of NHIA, Dr. Kelechi Ohiri, said significant progress had been made in advancing health taxation, particularly the taxation of SSBs.
He noted that the initiative would build on existing evidence and policy efforts rather than duplicate previous interventions, while improving coordination and implementation.
“This is not to duplicate or replicate existing efforts but to harmonise and work with them so that we can bring in additional evidence, ensure coordination and implementation in that direction so that we can move faster and translate the progress already achieved into lasting policy and health financing results,” he stated.
He noted that the health tax task team was important because no single institution could achieve meaningful health-tax reform alone.
“As seen in other exemplar countries, these taxes can help discourage consumption of harmful products, reduce pressure on health system and increase fund available for healthcare,” he added.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ipalibo Banigo, also emphasised the dual role of health taxes in reducing the consumption of products that contribute to preventable diseases while increasing domestic resources for healthcare.
She cited recent legislative efforts, including amendments to the customs and excise duty framework and the National Health Act aimed at increasing the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) allocation from one per cent to two per cent of the country’s consolidated revenue fund.
Banigo called for effective implementation, transparency, accountability, evidence-based policy design, public awareness and stronger intersectoral collaboration to ensure that health-financing reforms translate into improved health outcomes.
Also speaking, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Health, Mrs. Uju Rochas Anwukah, described health taxes as a strategy for “discouraging what is killing us and funding what can save us”.
Anwukah stressed the need for stronger domestic responses to the increasing burden of NCDs and expressed the interest of the Office of the Vice-President in the initiative.
The Chief Executive Officer of DGI Consult, Dr. Gafar Alawode, said the project was based on previous evidence and policy analysis on health taxes in Nigeria, which had been published in a peer-reviewed journal and disseminated.
He said the initiative would seek to strengthen existing policies and legal frameworks to make them effective enough to reduce harmful consumption and generate more resources for healthcare.
“We want to ensure that the laws and policies are potent enough to curb consumption of these harmful products and at the same time to be able to realise more money for health, but more importantly to ensure that the money realised is invested in health system strengthening and health insurance,” Alawode stated.
He, however, stressed that translating the strategy into implementation and measurable results would be the major task ahead.
Veteran health journalist and Chair/Co-convener of the Nigeria Universal Health Coverage Forum, Chief Moji Makanjuola, said mobilising additional domestic resources had become increasingly important as donor funding for health declines.
“We have to look inward. How do we get domestic finances that can help sustain health care, and make health accessible with equity for everyone?” she asked.
Makanjuola said discouraging the consumption of harmful products through effective health taxes required collective action, adding that public awareness and citizen demand would be critical to ensuring that reforms were properly implemented.
The Chairman of the Health Sector Reform Coalition and former Director-General of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Dr. Mustapha Lecky, expressed support for the initiative.
He said health taxation remained an issue of significant interest to civil society organisations across Nigeria, recalling previous CSO engagements during public hearings on health taxation.
He added that civil society groups had presented evidence on potential sources of health financing and approaches to strengthening the sector without necessarily relying on additional taxation.
“The coalition is willing to contribute further evidence and expertise to the ongoing health-tax reform process,” he stated.