The SNG Health Agreement signed with the Federal Ministry of Health has been rejected by the Health Reform Initiative Nigeria (He-RIN), a civil society organization that promotes health sector reform through increased funding, accountability, and local capacity building. He-RIN has described the agreement as self-serving, dishonest, and a calculated attempt to cripple current local mosquito net manufacturers.
He-RIN denounced the deal that resulted in a collaboration between Vestergaard and Harvestfield and the establishment of SNG Health for the provision of mosquito nets in Nigeria in a joint statement released on Wednesday by its Executive Director, Sunday Tobi, and Secretary, Abdul Musa.
The organization claims that the arrangement is just an extension of the United Nations Office for Project Services’ (UNOPS) past dominance of the industry under dubious conditions.
According to the statement, “UNOPS incubated the so-called SNG Health at the request of the Federal Ministry of Health through a Swiss company, in collaboration with the World Bank Nigeria, which operates as a sister organization to UNOPS, according to available evidence widely reported in the media weeks ago.”
He-RIN accused the Ministry of Health of purposefully undermining regional producers of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, attributing Nigeria’s ongoing malaria epidemic and failure to considerably lower malaria-related fatalities to what it claimed was the ministry’s cooperation with UNOPS years prior to the Bola Tinubu administration taking office in 2023.
Nigeria continues to have the world’s highest malaria load, the association stated. Nigeria is responsible for about 27% of all cases of malaria worldwide and 31% of all malaria-related deaths, with an estimated 184,000 deaths per year, primarily among pregnant women and children under five, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Malaria Report.
He-RIN went on to say that despite significant public health spending, this dire result still exists. According to data from the Federation’s Budget Office, Nigeria’s health sector has routinely received about 4–6% of the country’s annual budget, which is far less than the 15% benchmark set by the Abuja Declaration.
About N1.3 trillion, or little more than 5% of all government spending, went to the health sector in the 2024 Federal Budget.
According to data from the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) and partner financial declarations, the organization revealed that Nigeria has received and implemented about N1.5 billion for malaria control activities between 2015 and 2023.
Insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying, diagnostics, and antimalarial medications were the main uses of these funds, which were mostly supplied by the Global Fund, World Bank, USAID, and UN organizations.
He-RIN stated, “Nigeria continues to struggle with malaria control despite this scale of investment due to policy inconsistency, excessive reliance on imported mosquito nets, weak local manufacturing capacity, and opaque procurement practices.”
The organization recalled that the Federal Government had made plans for the local production of mosquito nets after a competitive bidding process was finished in 2022. However, the organization claimed that the process was suddenly stopped at UNOPS’s request soon after the current administration took office.
There hasn’t been any significant investment in the industry since then. Communities are still being devastated by mosquitoes, and Nigeria continues to have the unfortunate title of being the nation with the highest rate of malaria worldwide, the statement continued.
President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda for the health sector, which emphasizes 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, is directly at odds with He-RIN claimed.
The group emphasized that millions of direct and indirect jobs could have been created, foreign exchange could have been preserved, and malaria-related deaths could have been considerably decreased if local manufacturers had not been prevented from obtaining a proposed $100 million contract for the local production of insecticide-treated nets.
Following the failure of what it said was an attempt to redirect the $100 million plan, He-RIN insisted that SNG Health does not serve Nigeria’s best interests and described it as a resurgence of vested interests within the Ministry of Health in cooperation with UNOPS.
The organization emphasized that the President needs to look into the situation immediately to find out why, in its opinion, the Ministry of Health is putting profit-driven agreements ahead of Nigerians’ health and lives, even though malaria still kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
The organization voiced serious concerns about the Honourable Minister of Health’s refusal to publicly acknowledge the existence of local LLIN mosquito net manufacturers in Nigeria, despite their documented supply history to organizations like the World Bank and the Global Fund, their verifiable presence, and their previous international certifications.
He-RIN said that the Minister had a blatant conflict of interest when he took office since he had previously collaborated with Vestergaard. Since then, the Minister has consistently disadvantaged Nigerian-owned manufacturers while advancing policies that serve his personal and business interests.
It was discovered that the same Vestergaard company behind SNG’s partnership was also in charge of shutting down more than 20 Nigerian net manufacturers, including bed net clusters in Lagos, Aba, Kano, and Onitshia, when it developed its standard Llin, which was given away for free to Nigerians, thereby destroying the commercial market.
The organization claims that in order to create a void that allowed SNG Health to become the favored supplier, the Minister purposefully persuaded UNOPS to reject and effectively ban local manufacturers who had made significant personal and borrowed capital investments to establish LLIN facilities.
He-RIN further claimed that until the SNG Health agreement was finalized and procurement contracts could be sent directly to the SNG arrangement, the Minister would not start bids or malaria intervention campaigns in states backed by the World Bank.
The group claimed that despite available national data demonstrating that various LLIN types are still effective in various parts of the country, the Minister unilaterally pushed for the award of more than 25 million Global Fund-supported LLINs to a select group of favored companies without the support of any publicly disclosed or Nigeria-specific epidemiological studies.
He-RIN emphasized that Nigeria’s epidemiological data supports the use of various LLIN technologies suited to local mosquito species and resistance patterns, pointing out that a single-net strategy is not scientifically justified because Lagos mosquitoes differ greatly from those in Ebonyi and Sokoto States.
The organization claimed that policies that disregard current local manufacturers who have previously invested millions of dollars to establish LLIN factories and have successfully produced nets for international donors, such as the Global Fund and the World Bank, seem to be motivated more by corruption than by public health outcomes.
He-RIN recalled that the Ministry of Health still owes local manufacturers for supplies that were delivered more than ten years ago, despite the fact that these same manufacturers once made Nigeria famous by creating the largest mosquito net in the world, which was displayed at the African Leaders’ Summit on Roll Back Malaria at Eagle Square in Abuja and recognized by Guinness World Records.
According to the group, the goal of creating the biggest mosquito net in the world was to show off Nigeria’s manufacturing capabilities, promote long-term local production of LLINs, and support government and donor support for manufacturers who had taken out large loans to build factories.
He-RIN questioned why SNG Health was given priority when Nigerian manufacturers might have had guaranteed market access and sovereign-backed loan guarantees of up to $40 million, which would have produced the same results without uprooting current competitors.
The organization cautioned that because SNG Health competes in the same small market while receiving preferential treatment that distorts competition and jeopardizes the future of local industries, the Minister’s current policy framework directly harms established producers.
He-RIN further claimed that the Minister purposefully delayed the issuance of tenders for World Bank-borrowed funds for more than two years until the SNG Health plan was fully positioned, despite the fact that malaria deaths among children were on the rise. He-RIN warned that similar tactics are currently being used under the pretense of promoting “dual” LLIN technology, even though SNG Health is not the only manufacturer of such nets worldwide and dual LLINs shouldn’t be Nigeria’s only option.
According to the statement, “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 openly account for what happened to the $100 million initiative intended for local mosquito net manufacturing.”
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