Nigeria Needs Dedicated Healthcare Funding To Sustain Industrial Growth –Prof. Lere Baale

Nigeria must institutionalise dedicated, long-term healthcare funding to sustain the country’s emerging healthcare industrial boom and secure its future as a regional healthcare manufacturing hub.

This was said by the keynote speaker, Prof Lere Baale, at the Codix Group Dinner themed “Sustaining Nigeria’s Healthcare Industrial Boom: The Need for Dedicated Healthcare Funding”.

In his keynote address, the renowned Professor of Pharmacy Prof. Baale noted that Nigeria’s current healthcare transformation as a historic but fragile moment that requires deliberate financial architecture to endure.

According to him, “Nigeria is experiencing a healthcare industrial awakening—a shift from dependency to capability, from imports to local value creation. The boom is real, however, there is a call for us to sustain it.”

He said Nigeria’s healthcare and pharmaceutical ecosystem has undergone a quiet but profound transformation in recent years.

Indigenous manufacturers are expanding production capacity, diagnostic firms are investing in local assembly and innovation, regulatory confidence is improving, skilled professionals are returning, and regional and international partnerships are deepening.

He attributed this progress to a convergence of necessity and leadership, driven by lessons from global supply chain disruptions, the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign exchange volatility, and more intentional regulatory alignment with national industrial priorities.

“What we are witnessing is not just growth; it is industrial possibility—the emergence of healthcare as a strategic pillar of national development,” he said.

Despite these gains, Prof. Baale warned that the absence of structured, long-term, affordable healthcare-specific financing threatens the sustainability of the sector.

He stressed that healthcare manufacturing is capital-intensive, with long gestation periods, heavy upfront investment, stringent regulatory requirements, advanced technology needs, and a reliance on highly skilled human capital—yet it is often financed like short-term trading activity.

“A healthcare industrial boom without dedicated funding is like a factory without power—it may exist, but it cannot operate optimally,” he stated.

He called for dedicated healthcare funding is a strategic necessity that would stabilise supply, improve quality and regulatory compliance, create high-value jobs, protect national security, and attract global investment.

He emphasised that medicines, diagnostics, and medical consumables should be treated as strategic national assets, not ordinary commodities.

Prof. Baale outlined a comprehensive seven-point framework aimed at institutionalising sustainable healthcare financing in Nigeria.

This include- a call to increase the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) from the current one per cent to three per cent of consolidated government revenue, reflecting the strategic importance of healthcare to national productivity and security.

He further proposed that the expanded fund be strategically domiciled with the Bank of Industry (BOI), working in close coordination with the Federal Ministry of Health and supported by structured Medipool arrangements at the state and local government levels to ensure efficient, transparent, and timely disbursement of funds.

He also stressed the need for strict payment discipline across the healthcare value chain, recommending a guaranteed payment turnaround time of no more than 30 days to ensure cash-flow predictability, which he described as critical to manufacturing sustainability.

He also called for the establishment of a revolving healthcare fund to ensure continuity and long-term capital availability, rather than reliance on one-off interventions.

Prof. Baale further called for the implementation of a guaranteed sales and offtake framework to provide market assurance, encourage capacity expansion, and support quality improvements across the sector.

Collectively, he noted that these measures would create a mutually reinforcing, win-win architecture—securing reliable supply for government, enabling sustainable scale for industry, reducing risk for banks, attracting investor confidence, and ultimately improving access to quality healthcare products and services for citizens.

He called on banks to evolve into development partners, policymakers to treat healthcare as infrastructure investment rather than expenditure, regulators to continue balancing safety with growth, and institutional investors to recognise healthcare as a long-term value sector.