From policy to people: Nigeria can turn alcohol taxes into health for all

By Juliet Namukasa, Chijioke Nwokocha and Philip Jakpor What every Nigerian family wants Ask any Nigerian parent what they hope for, and the answer sounds the same in Kano, Enugu or Lagos. Children who grow up healthy and safe. A husband, a wife, the children who come home safely from the road. A clinic nearby, with a nurse and the medicines she needs.

A fair chance to build a good life. Most Nigerians already live in ways that protect these hopes: three in four Nigerian adults live alcohol-free. The weight families carry Yet many families still carry the weight of alcohol harm. About one in five Nigerian households has experienced alcohol-related violence or loss. Behind that figure are children who learn to fear the evening, and mothers who bury a son after a crash.

The number of Nigerians killed on the roads because of alcohol has tripled since 1990. And alcohol takes people in the prime of life: four in five Nigerians who die because of alcohol are younger than 70. Every one of these harms means a cost that all Nigerians are affected by, in hospital beds, lost wages, lost productivity, and grief no budget can measure.

Cheap by design This harm persists because the alcohol industry works aggressively to push alcohol on Nigerian people, through ultra cheap and widely available products. The World Bank’s latest Nigeria Development Update finds Nigeria’s pro-health taxes, including alcohol and tobacco taxes, among the lowest in West Africa. Even after this year’s increase, Nigeria taxes beer at about five US cents a litre.

The Gambia taxes it at US$2.20. Nigeria’s rates are also fixed in naira, so inflation shrinks them every year. That’s a gift to multinational alcohol corporations, paid for by Nigerian families and communities. Nigeria’s alcohol sachet story reveals the same alcohol industry interference practices. In 2018, the alcohol industry agreed to phase out the sachets and small bottles that make alcohol so widely available, including to children.

But Big Alcohol lobbying pushed the deadline back again and again, and enforcement was suspended and halted in the face of industry opposition before NAFDAC resumed it in 2026. Today, alcohol companies even sit inside the new policy’s own governance, through an industry relations working group. This is concerning because when those who profit from alcohol harm help write the rules, families pay the price.

Alcohol taxes: one tool, three wins Raising alcohol taxes is the single most cost-effective alcohol policy solution a government can adopt to protect the health of its people. They deliver three wins at once. They promote health. When alcohol becomes less affordable, alcohol consumption in the population declines, including young people and those at highest risk of alcohol harm.

Botswana shows what this means in Africa. With HIV prevalence as high as 18 percent, and alcohol recognised as an obstacle to HIV prevention, the government introduced an alcohol levy in 2008, overcoming intense Big Alcohol lobbying, and raised it over the following years. Within seven months of the first levy, traffic crash rates fell by 12 percent, and by another 12 percent after the 2010 increase.

Recorded alcohol use per person fell by 27 percent by 2016, and the levy raised US$100 million by 2014. Behind those numbers are families spared the phone call no one wants to receive. They reduce the costs of alcohol harm. Fewer crashes, less violence and less disease mean fewer emergency admissions, fewer families pushed into hardship by a breadwinner’s illness, and a healthier, more productive workforce, as young people thrive.

They raise revenue for people’s priorities. When the Philippines raised alcohol and tobacco taxes in 2012, it used the revenue to give the poorest 40 percent of Filipinos fully subsidised health insurance. Within three years, almost three times as many poor and near-poor families were covered, 15.3 million poeple in all. Care became possible for millions who had gone without.

In Nigeria, the same revenue can turn the National Alcohol Policy from promise into practice. A modern alcohol law to make it last A policy guides; a law binds. A modern national alcohol law gives these gains a lasting foundation. It anchors alcohol taxes in legislation, secures the revenue for the policy’s programmes, and keeps public health decisions in public hands.

That last point matters most. Today, alcohol companies sit inside the new policy’s own governance. The companies that profit from alcohol will always argue for cheaper alcohol and ineffective rules. A modern law treats them as what they are – a regulated industry causing harm to Nigerians – and lets health officials, parliamentarians and communities shape the rules, free from commercial conflicts of interest.

These steps reinforce each other: higher alcohol taxes save lives and raise revenue, the revenue funds the policy implementation, and the law secures both. We call on the Federal Government and the National Assembly