By George Mgbeleke

The Health Reform Initiative Nigeria (He-RIN), a civil society organisation advocating health sector reform through increased funding, accountability and local capacity building, has rejected the SNG Health Agreement signed with the Federal Ministry of Health, describing it as self-serving, deceptive and a deliberate attempt to cripple existing local mosquito net manufacturers.

In a joint statement issued on Wednesday by its Executive Director, Sunday Tobi, and Secretary, Abdul Musa, He-RIN condemned the agreement that led to a partnership between Vestergaard and Harvestfield, culminating in the formation of SNG Health for the supply of mosquito nets in Nigeria.

According to the organisation, the arrangement is merely a continuation of the activities of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which it said previously dominated the sector under questionable circumstances.

“From available evidence widely reported in the media weeks ago, the so-called SNG Health was incubated by UNOPS at the instance of the Federal Ministry of Health through a Swiss company, in collaboration with the World Bank Nigeria, which operates as a sister organisation to UNOPS,” the statement said.

He-RIN accused the Ministry of Health of deliberately undermining local manufacturers of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, tracing Nigeria’s persistent malaria burden and failure to significantly reduce malaria-related deaths to what it described as the ministry’s collusion with UNOPS years before the Bola Tinubu administration assumed office in 2023.

The group noted that Nigeria continues to bear the heaviest malaria burden globally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) World Malaria Report, Nigeria accounts for approximately 27 per cent of global malaria cases and 31 per cent of malaria-related deaths, with an estimated 184,000 deaths annually, mostly among children under five and pregnant women.

He-RIN further stated that this grim outcome persists despite substantial public spending on health. Data from the Budget Office of the Federation show that Nigeria’s health sector has consistently received only 4–6 per cent of the annual national budget, far below the 15 per cent Abuja Declaration benchmark.

In the 2024 Federal Budget, the health sector received approximately N1.3 trillion, representing just over five per cent of total government expenditure.

On malaria-specific investments, the organisation disclosed that Nigeria has received and deployed over N1.5 billion for malaria control interventions between 2015 and 2023, according to figures from the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) and partner funding disclosures.

These funds, largely provided by the Global Fund, World Bank, USAID and UN agencies, were primarily spent on the procurement and distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying, diagnostics and antimalarial medicines.

“Despite this scale of investment, Nigeria continues to struggle with malaria control due to policy inconsistency, excessive reliance on imported mosquito nets, weak local manufacturing capacity and opaque procurement practices,” He-RIN said.

The organisation recalled that the Federal Government had concluded arrangements for the local manufacturing of mosquito nets following a competitive bidding process completed in 2022, but alleged that the process was abruptly halted at the instance of UNOPS shortly after the current administration assumed office.

“Since then, the sector has witnessed no meaningful investment. Mosquitoes continue to ravage communities, while Nigeria retains the unenviable position of the world’s most malaria-burdened country,” the statement added.

He-RIN argued that these developments directly contradict President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda for the health sector, which prioritises a Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp) to Universal Health Coverage (UHC), increased funding, strengthened Primary Health Care through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF), reforms under the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), health workforce development, and the promotion of local production as a pillar of a resilient health system.

The group stressed that if local manufacturers had not been blocked from accessing a proposed $100 million contract for the local production of insecticide-treated nets, millions of direct and indirect jobs could have been created, foreign exchange conserved, and malaria-related deaths significantly reduced.

He-RIN maintained that SNG Health does not serve Nigeria’s best interests, describing it as a re-emergence of vested interests within the Ministry of Health in collaboration with UNOPS, following the failure of what it alleged was an attempt to divert the $100 million initiative.

The organisation stressed that the President must urgently investigate the matter to understand why the Ministry of Health is, in its view, prioritising profit-driven arrangements over the health and lives of Nigerians, while malaria continues to claim hundreds of thousands of lives annually.

The organisation expressed deep concern that the Honourable Minister of Health has never publicly acknowledged the existence of local LLIN mosquito net manufacturers in Nigeria, despite their verifiable presence, prior international certifications, and documented supply history to agencies such as the Global Fund and the World Bank.

He-RIN alleged that the Minister assumed office with a clear conflict of interest, having previously worked in alignment with Vestergaard, and has since promoted policies that favour his personal and commercial interests while systematically disadvantaging Nigerian-owned manufacturers.

It revealed that the same Vestergaard company behind the partnership of SNG was the company responsible for closing down over 20 manufacturers of net in Nigeria including the bed net clusters in Lagos, Aba, kano and Onitshia when it came up with its standard Llin that was distributed free to Nigerians therefore killing the commercial market

According to the organisation, the Minister deliberately encouraged UNOPS to exclude and effectively ban local manufacturers who had invested substantial personal and borrowed capital to establish LLIN factories, creating a vacuum that enabled the emergence of SNG Health as the preferred supplier.

He-RIN further alleged that the Minister refused to commence tenders or malaria intervention campaigns in World Bank-supported states until the SNG Health agreement was finalised and procurement contracts could be directly channelled to the SNG arrangement.

The group stated that the Minister unilaterally pushed for the award of over 25 million Global Fund-supported LLINs to a narrow group of favoured companies without the backing of any publicly disclosed or Nigeria-specific epidemiological study, despite existing national data showing that multiple LLIN types remain effective across different regions of the country.

He-RIN emphasised that Nigeria’s epidemiological evidence supports the deployment of different LLIN technologies tailored to regional mosquito species and resistance patterns, noting that mosquitoes in Lagos differ significantly from those in Ebonyi and Sokoto States, making a single-net approach scientifically unjustifiable.

The organisation asserted that corruption, rather than public health outcomes, appears to underpin policies that ignore existing local manufacturers who had previously spent millions of dollars to establish LLIN factories and had successfully produced nets for international donors, including the Global Fund and the World Bank.

He-RIN recalled that the Ministry of Health is still indebted to local manufacturers for supplies delivered over a decade ago, even as those same manufacturers once placed Nigeria on the global stage by producing the world’s largest mosquito net, recognised by the Guinness World Records and displayed at Eagle Square, Abuja, during the African Leaders’ Summit on Roll Back Malaria.

The group stated that the objective of producing the world’s largest mosquito net was to demonstrate Nigeria’s manufacturing capacity, encourage sustained local production of LLINs, and justify continued government and donor patronage for manufacturers who had borrowed heavily to establish factories.

He-RIN questioned why SNG Health was prioritised when Nigerian manufacturers could have been supported through sovereign-backed loan guarantees of up to $40 million, coupled with assured market access, achieving the same outcomes without displacing existing players.

The organisation warned that the Minister’s current policy framework is directly harmful to existing manufacturers, as SNG Health competes within the same limited market while enjoying preferential treatment that distorts competition and undermines local industry survival.

He-RIN further alleged that the Minister deliberately stalled the issuance of tenders for World Bank-borrowed funds for over two years—despite rising malaria deaths among children—until the SNG Health plan was fully positioned, and cautioned that similar strategies are now being deployed under the guise of promoting “dual” LLIN technology, even though SNG Health is not the sole global producer of such nets and dual LLINs should not be imposed as the exclusive option for Nigeria.

“We therefore call on President Bola Tinubu to act in the national interest by halting the SNG Health arrangement and directing the Ministry of Health to publicly account for what happened to the $100 million initiative intended for local mosquito net manufacturing,” the statement said.