Nigeria’s Health Insurance Coverage Hits 23.06 Million, Up 42 Per Cent

ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria’s national health insurance coverage has reached 23.06 million people, up 42.35 per cent from 16.20 million in late 2023, the Director-General of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Dr Kelechi Ohiri, said at the Future of Health Conference in Abuja on Thursday, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported.

Ohiri spoke at the 11th edition of the conference, organised by Nigeria Health Watch under the theme “From Innovation to Impact: The Future of Health is Now.” He said “the ultimate test of health financing reforms would be whether Nigerians could obtain timely and quality healthcare”, according to NAN.

What is driving national health insurance coverage

Enrolment under the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) gateway, which pays premiums for poor and vulnerable Nigerians, rose from 2.64 million in the second quarter of 2026 to 3.18 million in the third quarter. All 3,182,943 enrollees were biometrically verified using their National Identification Numbers, Ohiri said.

The NHIA also reported growth among groups that are often excluded. Enrolment under a Global Fund-supported scheme for key populations in Gombe, Anambra, Ebonyi and Kwara states rose from 25,815 in the last quarter of 2025 to 58,447 in the third quarter of 2026.

Maternal and newborn programmes had reached 96,068 beneficiaries as of October 2026. The maternal emergency care programme treated 80,906 women across 263 accredited facilities, the Fistula Free Programme reached 6,059 women across 19 specialised facilities, and the neonatal emergency care programme reached more than 9,103 newborns.

The authority said it had received and tracked 2,209 complaints from enrollees, health facilities and health maintenance organisations (HMOs), and that 82 per cent were resolved within 48 hours.

New tools and a shift in accreditation

Ohiri described a set of tools intended to make insurance easier to use, including the MyNHIA mobile app, an online self-enrolment portal and QR codes that show coverage information. The authority is also moving from static accreditation of providers to an empanelment model, and has developed a National Health Technology Assessment Roadmap, Framework and Process Guidelines to guide decisions on which services and products to pay for.

Health technology assessment is used in many countries to compare the costs and benefits of medicines, devices and procedures before an insurer agrees to cover them. Applying it in Nigeria could help the NHIA decide which treatments offer the best value for limited funds, particularly as demand for care for chronic conditions rises.

Ohiri said the authority’s work aligns with the Strategic Health Sector Blueprint introduced by the federal government in 2023. Under an empanelment model, enrollees are generally linked to designated providers responsible for their primary care, an approach insurers in several countries use to encourage continuity and preventive care. Wider national health insurance coverage would also give the NHIA better data on which conditions drive costs.

The figures come a day after the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Iziaq Salako, said the federal government had disbursed ₦249.6 billion through the BHCPF in three years. The NHIA received ₦19.87 billion of the latest ₦40.76 billion approval.

How far there is to go

Despite the increase, 23.06 million people is still a small share of Nigeria’s population, which most estimates put above 200 million. Most Nigerians continue to pay for care out of pocket. A Gatefield survey presented in Abuja last week found that 27 per cent of respondents had borrowed money to pay for health care and 14 per cent had skipped care entirely.

Expanding national health insurance coverage depends on more states running functioning insurance schemes, on employers in the formal sector enrolling their workers, and on affordable options for people in the informal economy, who make up most of the workforce. It also depends on providers being paid on time, because facilities that wait months for reimbursement may turn insured patients away.

For people with chronic illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes and HIV, insurance can make the difference between taking medicines every month and stopping when money runs out. Covering monthly refills, routine tests and specialist reviews is where national health insurance coverage can do most to prevent costly complications.

Nigeria Health Watch Managing Director Vivianne Ihekweazu urged participants to leave with practical steps “rather than recommendations and commitments alone”. She cited a review that found none of 10 maternal and newborn digital health interventions had achieved sustained scale.

The NHIA did not give a target date for its next enrolment milestone.

 

Why it matters: Insurance growth is real but small relative to need; covering monthly chronic care is where it can prevent the most costly harm.

 

 

Source: News Agency of Nigeria (Racheal Abujah), 29 October 2026.