ThinkBusiness Africa has countered the push to increase the sugar-sweetened beverage tax in Nigeria.
In May, the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa was said to have released a report titled, ’Junk on Our Plates: Exposing Deceptive Marketing of Unhealthy Foods Across Seven States in Nigeria‘.
The document reportedly called for an aggressive overhaul of Nigeria’s Sugar-Sweetened Beverage tax, demanding an increase from the current N10 to N130 per litre.
The report accused beverage companies of using culturally resonant advertising to manipulate consumers and tied rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension directly to SSB consumption.
However, ThinkBusiness Africa, in a statement on Monday said it did a review of the report, presenting a more grounded and data-driven perspective.
In its counter-report, ThinkBusiness Africa challenged the analytical foundation of CAPPA’s recommendations, describing them as both “statistically inconsistent and economically risky.”
ThinkBusness Africa argued that “CAPPA draws its core conclusions from outdated or mismatched data, such as citing obesity trends among sedentary urban women while recommending policy interventions primarily targeting adolescent males—the demographic it identifies as consuming the most sugary beverages.”
It added that CAPPA’s assumption that the N10/litre SSB tax had failed to curb consumption or improve health outcomes was not backed by any published data.
“ThinkBusiness Africa highlights this gap, emphasising that there has been no national assessment of the current tax’s effectiveness.
“You cannot credibly propose a 1,200 per cent increase in any tax without first evaluating the impact of the existing policy. Policy decisions must be rooted in evidence, not just urgency. The risk of overreach is high—both in economic disruption and public trust,” the Chief Executive Officer of ThinkBusiness Africa, Dr Ogho Okiti, said.
Okiti further outlined the “complexity” of Nigeria’s beverage industry, which he said spanned large-scale manufacturers to informal retail vendors operating across rural and urban economies.
He stated that tax enforcement became difficult and often disproportionately affected small and medium enterprises.
“There’s a tendency in some advocacy circles to treat sugar-sweetened beverages as the sole culprit in Nigeria’s nutritional challenges, but dietary health is influenced by a constellation of factors—urbanisation, income, education, processed food consumption, and sedentary behaviour. Singling out SSBs is reductionist,” he said.
Okiti stressed that the economic burden of a higher SSB tax could not be ignored.
“Nigeria’s beverage producers already contend with steep fiscal obligations, including a 30 per cent corporate income tax, 7.5 per cent VAT, and a 3 per cent tertiary education tax. According to PwC, this amounts to an effective tax burden of 45 per cent on the sector. An additional N130/litre excise tax would not only intensify inflationary pressure on consumers but also threaten jobs across the manufacturing and distribution value chains.
“Interestingly, Nigeria’s sugar consumption remains among the lowest in West Africa. The National Sugar Development Council reported that per capita sugar intake stood at just 6.9kg in 2018—a stark contrast to regional peers. This metric alone questions the portrayal of Nigeria as a sugar-saturated nation and casts doubt on the necessity of such an extreme policy response,” the statement read partly.
Okiti raised the issue of transparency, which he said remained a sticking point.
He posited that since the introduction of the SSB tax in 2022, there was no public accounting of the revenues it had generated or how those funds were used to support health systems.
“ThinkBusiness Africa warns that without transparency and earmarked spending, the tax risks losing its moral and fiscal legitimacy. If public health is the stated goal, then Nigerians deserve to know how their money is being used to achieve it.
“While CAPPA’s advocacy brings attention to Nigeria’s urgent health challenges, ThinkBusiness Africa’s response offers a sobering reminder of what’s at stake. Health policy cannot be detached from economic reality. As Nigeria navigates rising inflation, youth unemployment, and sluggish manufacturing growth, it must avoid what Dr Okiti calls trigger-happy fiscalism—policy driven more by optics than outcomes,” the statement added.
