The stakeholders made the call at the Health as a Political Issue Breakfast Meeting, themed: “Driving Accountability and Citizen Engagement Ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 Elections,” organised by Nigeria Health Watch in Abuja.
Although health is often mentioned in political party manifestos, commitments are frequently broad, loosely defined and not supported by clear targets or implementation plans. Even where specific promises are made, there are often limited mechanisms for tracking progress or holding political leaders accountable. This has created a persistent gap between political rhetoric and actual health outcomes.
Speaking during a panel discussion, the Commissioner for Health, Niger State, Dr. Murtala Muhammed Bagana, said health should be presented to politicians as one of the strongest political dividends capable of attracting electoral support.
Bagana said political leaders often make broad promises such as free healthcare without adequate technical input on how such commitments would be financed, implemented and measured.
He said, “It is not enough to say health. For us politicians, we need to better understand when you say health is one of the strongest political dividends. That is the language we want to hear.”
According to him, one of the major barriers to effective health commitments is that the right people are often not involved when political promises and priorities are being developed, noting that politicians contesting different levels of government frequently make similar promises, including free healthcare, without considering the realities of implementation.
The commissioner identified inadequate financing, health workforce shortages, poor use of data and weak coordination as major obstacles to achieving political commitments in the health sector.
He stressed that investments in healthcare workforce, immunisation and nutrition could provide significant returns, but political leaders were not sufficiently presented with such evidence in a way that could influence their priorities.
Bagana said the situation could change if health advocates and civil society organisations worked with political leaders to package evidence showing the economic and political benefits of investing in health.
He cited Niger State as an example, explaining that the state government had adopted a strategy of upgrading existing primary healthcare centres to Level Two facilities rather than focusing solely on constructing new ones.
Bagana urged civil society organisations to strengthen social accountability mechanisms at state and local government levels and help citizens track specific health commitments rather than relying solely on broad political manifestos.
Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of DGI Consult, Dr. Gafar Alawode, said Nigeria needed to treat health reform as a political process rather than merely a technical exercise.
Alawode said countries that had made significant progress in healthcare had used election periods to place health reforms firmly on the political agenda and secure commitments from political leaders.
He said Nigeria should learn from previous election cycles and develop a comprehensive citizen-led health agenda ahead of the 2027 elections.
According to him, such an agenda should clearly identify the country’s health challenges, priorities and evidence-based interventions and then be used to engage political parties and candidates.
He said stakeholders had previously engaged major political parties, including the All Progressives Congress, Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party, on health priorities, with recommendations covering health insurance, human capital development and other areas.
Alawode, however, said one major gap was the failure to ensure that political commitments contained in party manifestos were subsequently reflected in the priorities of ministers, commissioners and other government officials responsible for implementation.
“The gap was that the political leadership that we engaged, when it comes to setting priority, they brought another set of technical people, as commissioners, ministers, and at that level, they were not able to translate even what is in the manifesto to their priority,” he said.
He urged stakeholders to revisit and strengthen the citizen-led health agenda ahead of 2027, taking into account changes in Nigeria’s fiscal environment and lessons learned from the previous election cycle.
He said the focus should now move beyond securing manifesto commitments to ensuring that such commitments become actual government priorities after elections.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Health Watch has launched the “Vote for Health” campaign and a manifesto campaign aimed at making healthcare and social protection key issues in political discussions ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The Managing Director of Nigeria Health Watch, Vivianne Ihekweazu, said the initiative would mobilise civil society organisations, the media and citizens to demand clear and measurable commitments from political aspirants on improving the coutry’s health system.
She said health must move beyond being treated as a technical issue and become a central political priority, particularly as politicians begin preparing for the 2027 elections.
According to her, Nigerians should be asking political aspirants specific questions about how they intend to improve healthcare delivery, strengthen health systems and protect families from financial hardship caused by illness.
“As we approach elections, there are many priorities and different things that political experts are going to ask us about. We need to make sure that our constituents are also asking the right questions of the political experts.
“For example, how are they going to improve health and deliver on health costs? … I want you to also tell me what are you going to do to improve health?” she said.
Ihekweazu stressed the need for political actors to understand the importance of developing clear health policies and implementing them if elected.
She expressed concern that political actors were often absent from discussions on how health could be made a priority in Nigeria’s political agenda.
“I’m listening to all the deliberations we’ve had today. And we’re not in this room to even hear what people are talking about and how health should be a priority for politics,” she said.
The Nigeria Health Watch chief said the organisation would work with other civil society organisations to document and track the health-related commitments of political parties and aspirants.
She explained that the manifesto campaign would provide a platform for civil society to assess political commitments and hold elected officials accountable for promises made during the electioneering period.
Ihekweazu said the organisation also planned to convene a town hall meeting bringing together political aspirants, major political parties, civil society organisations and the media.
She said the campaign was not about supporting any political party or candidate, but about ensuring that health becomes an important consideration in the electoral process.
“All we are asking for is that health is a political priority and that there is adequate funding for all the citizens,” she said.
The campaign, she added, would seek to ensure that health-related promises made during the election season do not end as political rhetoric but are converted into measurable commitments that can be tracked by citizens and civil society organisations.
The stakeholders emphasised that stronger citizen engagement, better use of data, evidence-based political commitments and effective accountability mechanisms would be critical to ensuring that health remains a central issue in the 2027 electoral process.