The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has opposed a bill seeking to establish a National Institute for Public Health and Infectious Diseases, warning lawmakers that creating another federal public health agency with overlapping functions could weaken Nigeria’s disease surveillance and emergency response system.
The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr Jide Idris, made the agency’s position known on Thursday during a public hearing organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Infectious Diseases on the proposed National Institute for Public Health and Infectious Diseases (Establishment) Bill, 2025.
While acknowledging the need to strengthen Nigeria’s health security architecture, Idris argued that the proposed institute would duplicate responsibilities already assigned to the NCDC under its enabling law and could trigger conflicts over leadership and accountability during public health emergencies.
“The core responsibilities proposed for the new institute are substantially the same as those currently assigned to the NCDC,” Idris told lawmakers.
He warned that the bill raises “serious concerns over duplication of mandates, institutional overlap, governance conflicts and fiscal sustainability.”
The NCDC was established by an Act of Parliament in 2018 as Nigeria’s national public health institute, with statutory responsibility for disease surveillance, outbreak detection and response, laboratory coordination, emergency preparedness, public health research, workforce development and implementation of the International Health Regulations.
According to Idris, public health emergencies require a clear chain of command, and creating another federal institution with similar responsibilities could undermine effective coordination during disease outbreaks.
He noted that the bill designates the proposed institute as Nigeria’s National Focal Point for the International Health Regulations and empowers it to coordinate responses to infectious disease outbreaks—functions currently assigned to the NCDC and recognised internationally.
“Creating another federal institution with overlapping responsibilities would generate uncertainty over leadership, accountability and operational command during disease outbreaks,” he said.
The NCDC boss cited Nigeria’s response to major disease outbreaks, including Ebola, COVID-19, Lassa fever, cholera, meningitis, diphtheria and Mpox, as evidence that the country’s public health system has evolved around a unified command structure.
Beyond concerns about overlapping mandates, the agency also questioned the financial implications of establishing a new institution with its own headquarters, zonal offices, governing council and workforce at a time of competing national priorities.
Idris expressed concern over proposals to fund the institute partly through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, warning that such an arrangement could further strain resources already earmarked for critical healthcare services.
He said the Federal Government had invested heavily over the years in strengthening the NCDC’s laboratory network, surveillance systems, emergency operations centres, genomic sequencing capacity and outbreak response infrastructure.
According to him, establishing another agency with similar functions would amount to duplicating existing investments and run contrary to the government’s efforts to streamline public institutions.
