A body representing private nursing practitioners in Nigeria is pushing the Senate to abandon a bill that would create a new National Health Facility Regulatory Agency, saying it would duplicate work already done by existing regulators and stoke tension between health professions.
The Association of General Private Nursing Practitioners of Nigeria laid out its objections in a memo submitted during a July 8 public hearing at the National Assembly in Abuja.
The group’s president, Balogun Ajiboye, shared a copy with PUNCH Healthwise.
Rather than amending the bill, AGPNP wants lawmakers to throw it out entirely, a position echoed by several other health associations that have raised similar duplication concerns.
The association’s central argument is that Nigeria’s health system, as set out in the National Health Act of 2014 and the Constitution, was designed around cooperation between federal, state, and local governments, not a single centralized regulator.
It warned that passing the bill as written would step on powers state governments already hold, duplicate what agencies already exist to do, and put pressure on the independence long recognized by health professions currently enjoy.
Among the bodies it says would see their work duplicated are the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, the Medical and Dental Council, the Pharmacy Council, the Medical Laboratory Science Council, NAFDAC, and various state health ministries and hospital boards.
The group pointed specifically to Clause 7 of the bill, which hands the new agency powers over standard setting, inspection, accreditation, and enforcement, functions it says are already spoken for.
Because health sits on the concurrent legislative list, the association argued, creating a new federal body to oversee health facilities nationwide would step on responsibilities federal, state, and local governments already carry out.
It said decisions about licensing, inspection, and enforcement for facilities within a state are better handled by state governments and existing regulators, who understand local conditions more directly.
Rather than adding a new federal layer, the group said Nigeria should focus on giving current institutions more funding, capacity, and enforcement power.
The association also warned of broader fallout: overlapping mandates, more bureaucracy, added costs for public and private healthcare providers, erosion of state authority, and, pointedly, a higher risk of friction between professions, which it linked to what it called discriminatory language in the bill.
It further suggested some provisions seemed intended to elevate medical doctors above other health workers and could be used to justify unfair targeting of private healthcare providers.
Nursing independence featured heavily in the submission. The group insisted nursing is a self-contained profession with its own training standards, ethics, and legal framework, and cannot be placed under another profession’s oversight.
It cited the Nursing and Midwifery Act, which gives the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria sole authority over nursing regulation, and referenced a 2016 Lagos State High Court ruling, from a case the association itself brought, that it says confirmed the Council’s exclusive jurisdiction over the profession.
Any provision subjecting nurses to another profession’s authority, it argued, would conflict with existing law.
In its formal recommendations, AGPNP asked the National Assembly to reject the NHFRA bill outright, protect states’ constitutional role in regulating health facilities, invest in strengthening existing regulators instead of building a new federal bureaucracy, and set up a dedicated health intervention bank for the sector.
It said this approach would better support Nigeria’s federal structure, improve healthcare governance, and protect the independence of recognized health professions, while stressing that, whatever the bill’s intentions, it would not actually raise healthcare standards or improve facility oversight in its current form.
