Nigeria’s life expectancy is 54.9 years. Prevention could change the arithmetic

Nigeria’s life expectancy at birth stood at 54.9 years in 2025, compared with a global average of 73.7 years, according to United Nations data. The gap is nearly 19 years. Men can expect 54.3 years, women 55.9 years.

The 54.9-year gap

Too much health spending goes to treating disease after it becomes serious, while too little goes to prevention, early detection and routine care. That shows up in household poverty, lost productivity and the cost of managing conditions that could have been caught earlier. The silence after a doctor says “Stage Four” often follows years of ignored headaches, unexplained swelling or a single blood pressure reading at a pharmacy counter.

Why families pay for rescue

Out-of-pocket spending accounts for about 71 percent of total health expenditure. Government health spending remains below the 15 percent national budget commitment African governments made in the 2001 Abuja Declaration. National health insurance covered an estimated 21.7 million Nigerians by 2025, fewer than one in ten people in a population exceeding 242 million. When families pay most costs themselves, routine screening looks postponable. Transport, time off work, consultation fees and test costs add up. Emergency treatment becomes unavoidable later, with bigger bills and more complicated care.

The arithmetic of prevention

Hypertension shows the cost of waiting. The 2017 REMAH nationwide survey found roughly 38 percent of Nigerian adults live with hypertension, more than 50 million people. Only 12.4 percent have their blood pressure under control. A primary-care programme based on the World Health Organization’s HEARTS model, including screening, service delivery and medication, has been estimated at about $27 to $49 per patient annually. At the exchange rate used in the original analysis, that is about ₦36,000 to ₦65,000 a year, though actual costs vary with medicine prices and delivery models.

Dialysis in Nigeria can cost between ₦50,000 and ₦80,000 per session, with advanced patients typically needing two or three sessions each week. Annual costs can reach ₦6 million to ₦10 million, excluding related medicines. A kidney transplant may require ₦25 million to ₦30 million upfront, followed by continuing medicine and clinical care. Over five years, illustrative hypertension prevention and control costs about ₦178,000 to ₦323,000 per patient, compared with ₦30 million to ₦50 million for five years of dialysis. The figures are not directly interchangeable for every patient, and not every kidney failure is caused by hypertension. They still show the financial exposure that prevention can reduce.

Extending a HEARTS-style programme to Nigeria’s approximately 52 million hypertensive adults would cost an estimated ₦2.6 trillion for one year. That would require planning, reliable medicine supplies, trained personnel and sustainable financing. It must be weighed against the costs of advanced cardiovascular and kidney disease borne by families and the health system.

Diabetes blind spot

Only about 3 percent of Nigerian adults have diagnosed diabetes, roughly 3 million people. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that 73 percent of diabetes cases in Africa go undiagnosed. Nigeria’s actual burden is therefore likely to be considerably higher than its diagnosed cases.

For Nigerian households, the choice between a check-up today and a catastrophic bill later is shaped by cash flow. Prevention will not become routine until it is affordable, accessible and built into everyday care. That is the practical test for government and private-sector participation.