Depression in later life is a substantial yet under-recognized public health concern in low- and middle-income countries, including Nigeria, where rapid population aging heightens vulnerability. Evidence from community settings remains limited, particularly in southeastern Nigeria. This study examined the prevalence and sociodemographic factors associated with severe depressive symptoms among community-dwelling adults aged 60 years and older. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from June 2024 to August 2025 across 30 rural and urban communities in five southeastern states, using multistage purposive sampling to recruit 718 eligible participants. Data were collected through interviewer-administered questionnaires incorporating the Geriatric Depression Assessment Questionnaire and the Geriatric Depression Scale – Short Form. Severe depressive symptoms were highly prevalent. Advanced age, female gender, Christian religious affiliation, being married and living with family were significantly associated with higher odds of severe depressive symptoms, while educational level showed no association. Several associated sociodemographic factors contradicted widely held assumptions about the protective nature of traditional social structures, highlighting the need for further investigation into the quality and context of social relationships in later life. These findings underscore the urgent need for routine geriatric mental health screening, community-based support strategies and culturally responsive interventions within Nigeria’s primary care and social welfare systems.

We evaluated an edutainment intervention to encourage electoral corruption reporting in northern Nigeria via a live broadcast of a popular Hausa-language TV show, which aired October–December 2022, shortly before the February 2023 presidential elections. We incorporated behaviorally informed anticorruption messages into the scripts of the TV drama to encourage its tens of millions of viewers to report instances of electoral corruption. We used a randomized encouragement trial design, sampling over 6,000 participants across northern Nigeria through pre-recorded phone surveys. Watching the show caused a statistically significant increase in the perceived helpfulness and frequency of reporting, but we could not detect changes in knowledge of how to report or reporting behaviors.

The provision of viable health insurance is inextricably linked to the provision of the human right to health. While Nigeria’s journey toward universal health coverage began with the 2005 insurance scheme, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Act 2022 fundamentally changed the status quo by making insurance mandatory. Despite this, coverage remains abysmally low. This study analyses the intersection of human rights and health insurance, arguing that Nigeria’s crisis stems not from legislative insufficiency but from a systemic failure to operationalize existing frameworks. By engaging with the justiciability of health under the African Charter and the National Health Act 2014, the study finds that the barrier to health rights is an implementation gap fuelled by institutional dysfunction and fiscal negligence. It recommends prioritizing the enforcement of the NHIA Act and strategic funding of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund, as opposed to the agitation of further constitutional reforms.

This study examines how labour market segmentation shapes the rise and lived experiences of web-based platform workers in a developing country, focusing on how digital platforms both reproduce peripheral employment and create new forms of economic opportunity and meaningful work amid local constraints. Adopting a qualitative research design, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 Nigerian web-based platform workers and utilised thematic analysis to capture their subjective experiences. We found that web-based platforms have significant implications for work and employment in Nigeria. This is discussed within the study’s three overarching themes, including ‘precarity and economic security’, ‘perception of work meaningfulness’, and ‘country-specific issues’, which point to an upward trajectory in the number of web-based platform workers in the near future. By developing the notion of algorithmic segmentation as a context-sensitive extension of labour market segmentation theory, we show how platform-mediated mechanisms, worker dependence, infrastructure, and reputational conditions shape unequal access to work, income stability, and bargaining power. Our findings highlight the socio-cultural dimensions of meaningful digital labour and inform policy aligned with SDG 8 (decent work), calling for formal legal recognition of platform workers, minimum income guarantees, social protections, and strategic infrastructure investment.

Cysticercosis, a zoonotic infection caused by the larval stage of Taenia solium, poses significant public health challenges in endemic regions. This community-based case–control study examined the seroprevalence, risk factors, and potential association between human cysticercosis and epilepsy in Southern Nigeria. Between September and December 2023, a door-to-door survey screened 23,027 residents across five communities using a validated 10-item questionnaire for epileptic seizures. Confirmed cases and age-matched community controls were tested for T. solium antibodies using enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot (EITB) and for taeniasis by stool microscopy. Of 79 participants tested serologically, the overall seroprevalence of cysticercosis was 12.7% (10/79), with no statistically significant difference between persons with epilepsy (PWE) (11.9%) and controls (13.5%) (p > 0.05). Taenia spp. eggs were detected by stool microscopy in 6.6% of PWE. Multivariable logistic regression identified increasing age (adjusted OR = 0.95; 95% CI: 0.92–0.98; p = 0.01) and consumption of frozen meat (adjusted OR = 0.23; 95% CI: 0.06–0.98; p = 0.04) as factors independently associated with lower odds of cysticercosis seropositivity. One case of neurocysticercosis (NCC) (2.4%) was confirmed among PWE. These findings suggest that, while T. solium transmission occurs in Southern Nigeria, cysticercosis is unlikely to be a principal aetiological driver of epilepsy in the studied communities. Strengthened food hygiene practices and larger population-based investigations are warranted to better inform public health control strategies.

The international humanitarian system’s localization agenda increasingly relies on digital technologies to coordinate local and global actors. While NGO literature emphasizes digital literacy (DL) as the primary driver of transformative digital integration, this study examines how environmental constraints shape the relationship between DL and NGO digital integration outcomes. Through a comparative analysis of 16 Nigerian NGOs across infrastructure-rich Ogun State and infrastructure-poor Borno State, findings reveal that environmental barriers create a skill-implementation gap where even highly skilled NGOs cannot translate capabilities into transformative integration due to three barriers: infrastructure gaps, bandwidth ceilings, and beneficiary connectivity limitations. Borno NGOs consequently experienced constraints in maintaining digitally mediated accountability to donors, beneficiaries, other NGOs, and staff. These findings reveal that digital skill building alone cannot address humanitarian accountability challenges without parallel infrastructure development.

Maternal nutrition during pregnancy remains an important public health concern globally, including in Nigeria, with implications for both maternal and neonatal outcomes. This study explored stakeholders’ perceptions of pregnant women’s dietary practices and related factors in Ibadan, Nigeria. A qualitative design was adopted, and data collection was conducted between March and May 2024 in urban and peri-urban communities in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Using semi-structured key informant interviews, twelve purposively selected stakeholders were interviewed, comprising frontline health workers, policymakers, informal maternal care providers (traditional birth attendants), and community leaders. Data analysis was conducted using a hybrid thematic approach supported by NVivo 12. Stakeholders reported mostly carbohydrate-dominated diets and increasing consumption of processed foods, with limited intake of proteins and vegetables, despite recommendations from health workers. Stakeholders identified a complex interplay of factors influencing the whole spectrum of dietary practices, including personal factors (e.g. age, education, income) and interpersonal influences from significant others. Other notable key drivers were community-related factors, including cultural norms and religious beliefs, as well as institutional factors such as limited access to formal antenatal care and weak policy support. These findings underscore the need for context-specific interventions, including economic empowerment, culturally sensitive nutritional education, support systems, and policies to strengthen antenatal care nutrition services, access to dietary guidelines, and engagement with informal stakeholders.

Pangolins are one of the least studied mammal groups, with major gaps in our knowledge of their population status and ranging behaviour. These shortfalls arise from their elusive habits and the lack of telemetry devices suited to their biology and morphology, which has hindered efforts (including ours) to collect long-term ecological data. Here, we share insights from 24 months of fieldwork, costing c. USD 10,000, studying the ranging behaviour of the white-bellied pangolin Phataginus tricuspis in Nigeria’s Cross River National Park. Despite testing multiple approaches, including very high frequency (VHF) and modified solar-powered GPS telemetry tags, camera traps and UV-reflective markings, we obtained only c. 1 week of usable movement data. The modified devices enabled attachment to pangolin scales but were limited by short battery life and difficulty in retrieval. Combining VHF and GPS tags aided recovery and data retrieval, but required frequent recapture, which could increase animal stress. Overall, our experience shows that obtaining meaningful telemetry data for Phataginus species remains extremely challenging with current technologies. We recommend developing lightweight, long-lasting tracking devices with attachment systems adapted to pangolins’ scaled morphology. Such innovations will be key to advancing ecological research on these heavily hunted and trafficked mammals.

Cognitive impairment affects over 75% of young people with first-episode psychosis (FEP), yet cognitive rehabilitation is rarely available within public mental health services in sub-Saharan Africa. This implementation gap reflects both limited intervention availability and insufficient planning for local service realities. This article describes the participatory development of a Theory of Change (ToC) for the CognIFiEd study, a task-shifted Compensatory Cognitive Training intervention for young adults with FEP across three tertiary psychiatric hospitals in South-West Nigeria. Guided by WHO ExpandNet, RE-AIM, the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and established ToC methods, 25 stakeholders, including young people with lived experience, caregivers, clinicians, facilitators, administrators, policymakers and implementation scientists, co-produced and validated an implementation logic model through five workshops. The ToC identifies four core inputs: trained non-specialist facilitators, culturally adapted manuals, low-technology SMS and print reinforcement systems, and stakeholder engagement structures. These support weekly group sessions, caregiver psychoeducation, digital reinforcement, supervision and outpatient integration. Immediate outputs include cognitive strategy use, retention, social reintegration and caregiver skill development, while proximal outcomes include neurocognition, functional capacity, self-efficacy and caregiver strain. The model also specifies assumptions, LMIC-specific barriers, mitigation pathways and an accountability ceiling for distinguishing pilot outcomes from longer-term system impacts.

This article examines how WhatsApp functions as a space where people shape collective memory and challenge dominant sociopolitical narratives. Focusing on Nigeria’s Obidient movement, a youth-led campaign that supported Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election, this article seeks to understand how everyday online interactions on WhatsApp produced alternative ways of remembering and forgetting. In other words, this articles asks, How did members of an unofficial Obidient WhatsApp group enact counter-memory practices regarding Nigeria’s 2023 general elections? To answer this question, this study deployed the ethnographic approach and drew from Foucault’s concept of counter-memory and assemblage theory to understand how memory, technology, and social interaction converged in dynamic ways. The results indicate that members of the WhatsApp group construct and circulate alternative narratives that challenge mainstream sociopolitical accounts. These results are discussed in two central themes: ‘Counter-memory and the construction of alternative narrative’ and ‘WhatsApp as a mnemonic community and assemblage’. Through practices of circulating first-hand experiences and lived testimonies, evidence of electoral misconducts, and memories of past elections and protests, members collectively produced what the author described as a ‘mnemonic community’, a space where memory is created, negotiated, and sustained through interaction. However, these practices are not independent but are shaped by the interconnectedness of human (members of the group) and non-human (WhatsApp, smartphones, or multimedia content) factors. Overall, this article argues that messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, significantly shape how people remember and interpret sociopolitical movements and participation.

In Nigeria, religious leaders are de facto mental health gatekeepers, yet their explanatory models and attitudes remain poorly characterised at the population level. This cross-sectional study maps causal beliefs and attitudes among 207 Christian and Muslim religious leaders in Lagos using validated, culturally adapted instruments, forming the attitudinal and typological component of the CLERIC research programme. An integrated conceptual model posits that explanatory models structure causal attributions, which constitute the cognitive foundation of stigma-related attitudes clustering into typologies with direct implementation implications. Spiritual causation was most strongly endorsed (M = 11.9, SD = 2.3) but coexisted with psychosocial and biological attributions in pluralistic frameworks. Stronger spiritual beliefs linked to more restrictive attitudes (r = .41); biological beliefs predicted more supportive orientations (r = .35). Latent class analysis identified three optimal typologies (AIC = 2,847.3, BIC = 2,912.8, entropy = 0.82): spiritually oriented–high restrictiveness (38.2%), pluralistic–high benevolence (35.7%) and biologically oriented–low restrictiveness (26.1%). Education and prior mental health training were the strongest independent modifiable predictors of supportive orientation. These typologies challenge monolithic views of religious leaders and provide a stratified, evidence-based framework for designing tailored faith–health integration strategies beyond universalist engagement models in Nigeria and comparable low- and middle-income countries contexts.