Practice Across Nigeria's Communities
Traditional and indigenous medicine — the use of locally sourced herbal remedies, manual therapies such as bone-setting, traditional birth attendance, and healing practices framed within spiritual or cosmological belief systems — is practised across Nigeria's ethnic groups, among them the Yorùbá, Igbo, and Hausa, each with distinct terminologies and lineages of practitioners; the Yorùbá onísègùn (herbalist) and babaláwo (Ifá divination priest), and the Igbo dìbìà, are documented examples of specialist roles that combine herbal knowledge with divinatory or spiritual functions, according to Nigerian academic and government sources S1. The World Health Organization's African Region estimates that 70–80% of the region's population uses some form of traditional medicine as a primary healthcare approach, a figure the WHO connects partly to the one-third of Africans who lack reliable access to essential conventional medicines S5
Belief Systems and Healing
In much of the documented literature on Yorùbá and Igbo healing traditions, illness and treatment are frequently framed within a wider cosmological worldview rather than treated as a purely physical matter, with herbal treatment sometimes accompanying divination or ritual elements tied to indigenous religious practice. This is a documented feature of the traditions themselves, described here as cultural and religious practice rather than as a medical claim by NigeriaStuff; readers seeking the religious and cosmological context in fuller depth should see religion in nigeria S1
Traditional Birth Attendants and Maternal Health
Traditional birth attendants (TBAs) illustrate both the reach and the risk debate surrounding indigenous practice. Research published in Frontiers in Global Women's Health estimates that only around 43% of Nigerian women deliver with a skilled birth attendant, with the remainder relying on TBAs — a share that rises sharply in parts of the north, reaching an estimated 82.3% in Katsina, 87.2% in Yobe, and 95% in Zamfara State. The same research links Nigeria's maternal mortality ratio of 1,047 per 100,000 live births (2020 figure cited in the study, among the highest recorded globally) partly to TBAs' lack of formal training to recognise and manage life-threatening complications, which can delay emergency referral to hospitals. Rather than proposing to eliminate TBA practice, the cited researchers propose a "unilateral collaboration" model in which TBAs are trained to recognise danger signs and refer patients while continuing to provide culturally accepted care — a claim attributed here to the study's authors, not asserted independently by NigeriaStuff S7
From Policy Neglect to Formal Recognition
For much of the colonial and early post-independence period, Nigerian health policy centred on biomedicine imported through missionary and colonial institutions, with traditional practice operating largely outside formal government structures. That changed on paper in 2007, when the Federal Ministry of Health issued a National Policy on Traditional Medicine for Nigeria, setting out an intended framework to regulate and progressively integrate traditional medicine into the national health system. Implementation lagged for years, but the Ministry created a dedicated Department of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (TCAM) in 2018 to carry the policy forward S1
Regulation: NAFDAC and Product Safety
Manufactured and marketed herbal remedies fall under a separate regulatory track from the practice of traditional healing itself. The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) requires that no herbal medicine product be manufactured, imported, exported, distributed, advertised, sold, or used in Nigeria unless it is registered with the agency, with distinct pathways for locally produced and imported products, labelling standards, and Good Manufacturing Practice requirements introduced in guidance dated 2022. NAFDAC also operates a post-market adverse-reaction reporting mechanism for registered products; this registration regime governs commercial herbal products but does not itself certify or endorse the healing practices of individual traditional practitioners, whose oversight runs through the separate TCAM and state-level framework described below S6
The 2025 Strategic Plan and Code of Ethics
On 2 September 2025, marking African Traditional Medicine Day in Abuja, Nigeria's Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Adekunle Salako, unveiled a Strategic Plan of Action for Traditional Medicine Policy (2025–2029) alongside a Code of Ethics and Practice for Traditional Medicine Practitioners. Salako framed the initiative around evidentiary standards, stating that "evidence is the bridge between belief and policy" and that the goal was to "document, standardise, and integrate evidence-based traditional medicine into Nigeria's national health system" S2. The package included plans to expand the Nigerian Herbal Pharmacopoeia — which by 2025 documented over 200 medicinal plants and their uses — to revive the Federal College of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, closed since 2010, and to direct all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory to establish their own TCAM departments or boards; a Ministry official separately described the Code's aim as upholding "the highest standards of integrity, accountability and patient-standard care among practitioners," framing traditional and orthodox medicine as "not rivals but allies" S2S3
Integration Debates
The government's own framing — integration contingent on documentation, standardisation, and evidence — reflects an active and unresolved debate rather than a settled consensus. WHO's global strategy for traditional, complementary and integrative medicine for 2025–2034 similarly conditions health-system integration on "appropriate regulatory mechanisms" and a strengthened "evidence base," while stating integration should remain "culturally respectful" of indigenous knowledge S4. NigeriaStuff does not itself assess the clinical efficacy of any traditional remedy or practice; claims of effectiveness in this article are attributed to the government, WHO, or named practitioners, not asserted in the site's own voice S4. The practical outcome for now is a policy of selective, gradual integration alongside continued community-level reliance on traditional medicine, sitting beside the biomedical structure described at nigeria healthcare system S2