N2.48tr health allocation falls below Abuja Declaration’s 15% benchmark

The proposed N2.48 trillion health allocation in the 2025 appropriation bill falls short of the Abuja Declaration commitment, which recommends a 15% allocation of member states’ national budgets to the health sector.

While presenting the 2025 appropriation bill of N49.7 trillion, the president announced that the health sector would get an allocation of N2.48 trillion. He noted that this allocation will provide infrastructural facilities and essential medicines in hospitals and improve universal health coverage (UHC) by funding the Basic Health Care Fund.

“This aligns with the Federal Government’s planned procurement of essential drugs for distribution to public healthcare facilities nationwide, improving healthcare access and reducing medical import dependency,” said Tinubu.

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Although this proposed allocation represents a N980 billion increase compared with the 2024 Federal Ministry of Health allocation of N1.5 trillion, it still falls below the 15% of the national budget benchmark recommended by the Abuja Declaration, to which Nigeria is a party.

The Guardian found that the N2.48 trillion proposed health allocation represents 4.99% of the 2025 proposed budget of N49.7 trillion.

The Abuja Declaration is a commitment by the African Union (AU) member states to allocate at least 15% of their national budgets to improve healthcare. In April 2021, African Union (AU) member states, including Nigeria, adopted this declaration. The declaration sought to address health challenges that plagued member states at the time.

However, despite being a party to this commitment, Nigeria has fallen short about 15 times since signing the agreement.

For decades, health experts have lamented the inadequate funding in the health sector. The implications are dire and range from under-equipped health facilities to declining health conditions among the population.

A report by the National Bureau of Statistics, which sampled 3,330 health facilities in 2023, revealed that 35% of the sampled facilities had essential medicines, while the other 65% were either filled with expired medicines or had none.