Healthcare Expenditure and Life Expectancy in Nigeria: Evaluating the Role of Budgetary Allocation

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between healthcare budgetary allocation and life expectancy in Nigeria over the period 2016 to 2024, a decade in which the country's health-financing commitments have consistently fallen short of both the 15 percent benchmark set by the 2001 Abuja Declaration and the minimum per-capita spending recommended by the World Health Organization. Using secondary time-series data drawn from the Budget Office of the Federation, the Debt Management Office, the National Bureau of Statistics, the World Bank and the United Nations, the study applies Spearman's rank-order correlation and ordinary least squares regression to test whether movements in the share of the federal budget allocated to health are systematically associated with movements in life expectancy at birth. The results show a positive but statistically insignificant relationship (Spearman's rho = 0.483, t = 1.461, p > 0.05; OLS R² = 0.128, p = 0.345), a pattern that persists, and in fact weakens, once a one-year lag is introduced to allow for delayed policy effects. The study concludes that budgetary allocation, taken alone, is a necessary but insufficient condition for improving population health outcomes in Nigeria; the weak statistical link reflects deeper problems of implementation, absorptive capacity, corruption-related leakage and the continuing dominance of out-of-pocket spending in the country's health-financing mix. The paper recommends a shift in policy emphasis from the nominal size of the health vote to its timely release, transparent execution and translation into functional primary healthcare infrastructure, alongside a credible, time-bound roadmap for closing the Abuja Declaration gap.