Fewer Than 3% of Nigerians With Mental-Health Conditions Have Insurance Cover, NHRC Says
Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission has warned that inadequate insurance coverage, weak access to professional care and continuing discrimination are leaving people with mental-health conditions exposed to financial hardship and rights abuses.
NHRC Executive Secretary Tony Ojukwu said fewer than three per cent of Nigerians living with mental-health conditions are covered by health insurance.
That figure refers specifically to health-insurance coverage among people living with mental-health conditions.
It does not describe the prevalence of mental-health conditions in Nigeria, and it should not be read as the national treatment-access rate.
Families Carry More of the Cost
Limited insurance coverage means many treatment costs fall directly on individuals and families.
The NHRC says that financial burden is compounded by shortages of trained professionals, inadequate services and persistent stigma.
Ojukwu called for wider health-insurance coverage, more affordable treatment and increased government investment in mental-health services.
For families already managing wider economic pressures, paying privately for specialist care can become another barrier to treatment.
The issue is therefore not only whether services exist.
It is whether people can reach them, afford them and receive care without discrimination or abuse.
NHRC Frames Mental Health as a Rights Issue
The commission says mental health is also a human-rights question.
People living with mental-health conditions are entitled to dignity, equality, appropriate care and protection from discrimination.
The NHRC has cited individual cases in which people with psychosocial disabilities were allegedly subjected to degrading or abusive treatment.
Those cases raise serious accountability questions.
They should not, however, be treated as evidence that abuse is universal across mental-health facilities, homes or communities.
National Mental Health Act Sets the Legal Framework
Nigeria’s National Mental Health Act received presidential assent in December 2022 and provides the country’s current rights-based legal framework for mental-health care and protection.
The NHRC’s concern is that legal protections alone are insufficient if people still cannot obtain affordable care or if safeguards against neglect, coercion and discrimination are weakly implemented.
The commission says effective implementation must include stronger oversight, wider community-based services and better access to trained professionals.
NHRC Pushes Human-Rights Protections in 2027–2032 Plan
The commission says it is working with the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to integrate human-rights protections into the proposed National Mental Health Strategic Plan for 2027–2032.
Ojukwu has also called for greater recruitment and deployment of psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, psychiatric nurses and social workers.
The policy test will be whether those commitments translate into services that people can actually reach and afford.
Access Numbers Must Not Be Mixed
Separate reporting from the same broader mental-health advocacy period has cited claims that more than 90 per cent of Nigerians who develop mental-health or drug-use disorders do not have access to appropriate care.
That is a different metric from the NHRC’s insurance figure.
One concerns reported access to care.
The other concerns health-insurance coverage.
The two figures should not be merged or used interchangeably.
Accountability Turns to Funding and Delivery
The next accountability questions are practical.
How much public funding is allocated to mental-health services?
How many people with mental-health conditions are covered under existing insurance schemes?
How widely are specialist services available outside major urban centres?
And what happens when facilities or caregivers violate the rights of people living with mental-health conditions?
Those answers require public data.
Until they are available, the gap between policy commitments and what patients and families can actually access will remain difficult to measure.