Nigeria’s health insurance coverage has increased by 42.35 per cent, rising from 16.2 million people in late 2023 to 23.06 million in 2026, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has said.
The Director-General of NHIA, Dr Kelechi Ohiri, disclosed this on Thursday at the 11th Future of Health Conference 2026, organised by Nigeria Health Watch in Abuja.
Ohiri said expanding coverage must translate into quality healthcare, access to essential medicines and protection against excessive out-of-pocket expenses.
He said the authority had introduced digital tools, including the MyNHIA mobile application, an online enrolment portal and quick response codes, to help enrollees understand their benefits and exercise their rights.
According to him, NHIA tracked 2,209 complaints from enrollees, healthcare facilities and health maintenance organisations, resolving 82 per cent within 48 hours. The authority also secured refunds for some enrollees who were improperly charged and sanctioned persistently non-compliant providers.
Ohiri added that enrolment under the Basic Health Care Provision Fund gateway increased from 2.64 million in the second quarter of 2026 to 3.18 million in the third quarter, with all 3,182,943 beneficiaries biometrically verified using their National Identification Numbers.
He said NHIA’s maternal and newborn health programmes had reached 96,068 beneficiaries as of October 2026, including 80,906 women treated under the maternal emergency care programme, 6,059 women reached through the Fistula Free Programme and more than 9,103 newborns supported under neonatal emergency care.
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He also disclosed that enrolment under the Global Fund-supported insurance initiative for key populations in Gombe, Anambra, Ebonyi and Kwara states rose from 25,815 in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 58,447 in the third quarter of 2026.
To improve healthcare quality, Ohiri said the authority was replacing static provider accreditation with an empanelment model that assesses facilities based on clinical quality, financial sustainability, data integrity and governance.
He added that the reforms aligned with the Federal Government’s Strategic Health Sector Blueprint introduced in 2023 to improve health outcomes and expand access to essential healthcare.
Speaking at the conference, Nigeria Health Watch Managing Director, Mrs Vivianne Ihekweazu, urged stakeholders to move beyond discussions about healthcare innovation and address the financing, policy, procurement and data systems required to sustain successful interventions.
She cited a review of 10 digital innovations in maternal and newborn health in Nigeria, which found that none had achieved sustained scale, partly because of limited institutional ownership and integration into routine healthcare delivery.
Ihekweazu called for greater emphasis on sustainability and wider implementation, highlighting innovations in artificial intelligence-enabled self-care, solar-powered cancer treatment, disease surveillance and interventions to reduce maternal and child deaths.
The conference, themed “From Innovation to Impact: The Future of Health is Now,” brought together policymakers, healthcare professionals, innovators and development partners to explore ways to translate healthcare innovations into measurable outcomes.
Ohiri said the ultimate measure of health financing reforms would be whether Nigerians could access timely, quality healthcare without suffering financial hardship.
