Tinubu Bola Ahmed

Health section

Our healthcare delivery strategy will target poor and marginalised communities, leaving nobody behind. We will expand service delivery to marginalised groups through the use of demand-side incentives and the establishment of a regulated community-based health insurance scheme within the brooder National Health Insurance Scheme.

We will implement policies to ensure that all services In federal government hospitals are high-quality, people-centred and delivered in accordance with best industry practice. The rapid scale-up of COVID-19 diagnostic services demonstrate that it is possible to rapidly improve service delivery with sufficient effort and resources.

Primary healthcare will remain the bedrock of our system. Deploying adequate infrastructure and human resources to address maternal and childcare, immunisation, managing preventable diseases and treatment of malaria, typhoid and other water borne diseases will cater to the majority of our most pressing primary healthcare challenges.

The most effective avenue to achieving this is to, strengthen our notional primary healthcare network. Through the use of incentive schemes and counterpart funding programs, we will work with State Governments to build a network of static as well as mobile local clinics to ensure that no person lives more than 3km or o 30-minute walk from a primary facility.

Additionally, In conjunction with State and Local Government authorities, a Tinubu administration will facilitate the upgrading, equipping and staffing of a general hospital in every Local Government Area, a tertiary faclllty in each State and a world-class specialist hospital in each geo-politica1 zone. Such a network will not only render basic care to a greater number of people, but shall also attract medical tourists to Nigeria. It will also help us gather more information on the incidence of diseases in Nigeria, which shall help provide an early warning against the advance of dangerous infectious diseases In the country.

Working with State and Local Governments, we will encourage preventative measures such as vaccinations, eye tests and cancer screening, blood pressure monitoring and diabetes testing for early detection of illnesses. Such preventative care services will be grassroot based, gender sensitive, and affordable.

Increased and more effective health spending are our primary objectives. We shall achieve this by improving the allocation of healthcare in the national budget. Our government will scale-up the National Health Insurance Authority Act, with the objective of implementing a mandatory health insurance scheme to cover at least 40% of the population within two years. We will also expand public sector driven mandatory health insurance coverage while augmenting the financial mechanism such as the Basic Health Care Provision Fund and vulnerable Group Fund to caver vulnerable populations.

A progressive, decentralised social health insurance scheme will be pursued in order to provide universal basic healthcare to all. In addition to other sources, funds saved by the removal of the fuel subsidy shall be earmarked for use in helping to provide health coverage for pregnant women and children under-five.

Consumption taxes on alcohol and tobacco products will be dedicated to fund healthcare services. Such taxes shall also work to deter behaviour that undermines individual and community health.

We will embark on a focused manpower plan to increase the number, and enhance the skill sets, of our healthcare workers, particularly those working in primary healthcare facilities.

We shall also update the curricula of our medical schools, nursing schools and other teaching institutions to include leadership, finance, management and current healthcare trends. We will implement a deliberate policy to retain skilled manpower. Incentives will include performance-based salary increases, health insurance to cover family members, favourable mortgage or home-ownership plans for health workers, and tertiary education scholarships for their children.

We shall also implement a deliberate policy to retain skilled manpower. Incentives will include performance based salary increases, favourable mortgage or home-ownership plans for health workers, and tertiary scholarships for their children.

In addition, our administration will ensure the creation of new healthcare jobs in urban areas as well as in rural communities by training and employing teams of health workers and support staff to work and visit rural and urban communities, engaging households on sanitary best practices ond prevention of other diseases, while listening to the healthcare concerns of local residents.

We shall also prioritise improving data collection and analysis to ensure that critical public health decisions are evidence-based and grounded in science.

Working with the private sector, we shall encourage and fund local research for new drugs, vaccines and disease epidemiology, determining best approaches to disease management within our local context.

Our government will support the allocation of about 1% of pooled health insuronce funds to health research, through research grants and support for institutions involved in health research. We will also encourage domestic manufacturing of essential medicines and vaccines in Nigeria.

Mental health issues and the consequences of drug abuse are growing concerns throughout Nigeria, particularly in our crowded urban areas. A Tinubu government will place great emphasis on mental health promotion and orientation programs for at-risk populations to reduce the incidence of abuse and illness.

We shall also train primary healthcare workers on the early detection and treatment of mental illness and drug abuse to reduce the number of people who suffer alone while their illnesses go undetected and untreated.

Questions to ask Tinubu Bola Ahmed

1. What specific demand-side incentives will be used to expand service delivery to marginalised groups, and which federal agency will design and regulate the proposed community-based health insurance scheme within the National Health Insurance framework?
2. How will you define and measure “high-quality, people-centred” services in federal hospitals? What accreditation standards, patient outcome indicators, or independent audits will be used?
3. By when do you intend to achieve the goal that no person lives more than 3 km or a 30‑minute walk from a primary facility, and what interim milestones will you set to track progress?
4. What is the current baseline proportion of the population living more than 3 km from a primary healthcare facility, and how will you address hard-to-reach or insecure areas where mobile clinics may face access constraints?
5. What are the estimated capital and recurrent costs for building and operating the proposed network of static and mobile local clinics, and what counterpart funding ratios will you require from State Governments?
6. Who will be responsible for site selection, staffing, equipment procurement, and maintenance for the planned upgrades to one general hospital in each LGA and one tertiary facility in each state?
7. What explicit standards will define a “world-class specialist hospital” in each geopolitical zone (e.g., service lines, staffing ratios, accreditation, research output), and how will compliance be verified?
8. What total budget envelope is allocated for hospital upgrades and new specialist centres, and how will ongoing operating costs (salaries, consumables, utilities) be sustainably financed after commissioning?
9. You aim to implement mandatory health insurance covering at least 40% of the population within two years; what are the quarterly enrollment targets and key steps (regulations, platform readiness, provider empanelment) to reach this?
10. How much annually do you project from fuel subsidy savings for coverage of pregnant women and children under five, and what legal or budgetary mechanism will ring-fence these funds for health?
11. What are the expected annual revenues from dedicated alcohol and tobacco consumption taxes for healthcare, and will new legislation earmark these proceeds at federal and state levels?