How Nigeria’s festive season is fuelling a silent health crisis

In Nigeria, festive seasons are moments of joy, generosity and excess. But beneath the music, meals and merriment lies a growing public-health concern. As sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods dominate celebrations, health experts warn that the country’s rising burden of non-communicable diseases is being quietly accelerated, report ADEKUNLE YUSUF and OLABISI AZEEZ

By the time Christmas lights flicker on across Nigerian cities, something else is already in motion. Long before the first carol is sung or the first pot of rice is stirred, an invisible infrastructure has been activated—one that does not serve celebration so much as consumption, not community but chemistry.

Festive seasons in Nigeria have always been generous. They stretch tables, loosen purses, and soften the year’s hard edges. But in recent years, public health experts warn, something has shifted. Celebration itself has become a delivery system for disease. This was the central concern raised on February 4, 2026, in Lagos, when Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) presented findings from its report, Unhealthy Food Hijack of Festive Periods in Nigeria. Speaking to journalists, CAPPA’s Executive Director, Akinbode Oluwafemi, framed the issue starkly. “What we are dealing with is not festive excess,” he said. “It is a systematic reshaping of Nigeria’s food environment at the most vulnerable moments of the year.”

Between November 25, 2025, and January 5, 2026, CAPPA documented how the food and beverage industry used Christmas and New Year as high-risk windows to flood Nigerian spaces—physical and digital—with marketing for sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods. The result, public-health advocates argue, is not just seasonal indulgence but the reinforcement of dietary patterns driving Nigeria’s accelerating crisis of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Nigeria’s burden of non-communicable diseases has been rising quietly but relentlessly. Hypertension, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular disease are no longer conditions of affluence or old age. They are increasingly diagnosed in working-age adults and, disturbingly, in younger populations. Yet festive periods—already associated with higher food intake—have become moments when the country’s weakest dietary defences are deliberately breached. “Festive marketing acts as a health risk amplifier,” Oluwafemi warned. “It intervenes precisely when consumption is already elevated and restraint is lowest.”

CAPPA’s monitoring revealed a level of saturation that public-health researchers describe as environmental exposure. From malls and transport hubs to churches and parks, Nigerians encountered repeated cues nudging them toward high-sugar, high-salt, and high-fat products. This was not accidental visibility. It was coordinated behavioural nudging. Examples were everywhere: Coca-Cola’s revived Holidays Are Coming truck tour; Nigerian Breweries’ Legendary Christmas light installations; Gino’s Christmas Village in Gbagada Park. These were not just promotions. They were immersive environments in which unhealthy products were positioned as essential companions to joy, generosity, and national identity. “When unhealthy foods are presented as cultural symbols,” a CAPPA researcher noted, “they stop being seen as dietary risks. They become emotional necessities.”

From a health perspective, the most alarming findings involved children. Festive marketing targeted young people with a precision that bypassed parental control. Cartoon characters, Santa figures, free samples, school donations, and “gifts” embedded unhealthy foods into childhood memory and habit formation. Indomie’s Season to Show Some Love campaign placed branded Santas in malls. Viju Milk’s school donations arrived wrapped in Christmas messaging. Peak’s Enjoy Christmas at Its Peak breakfast events normalised sweetened milk as a daily staple. “These are not neutral gestures,” Oluwafemi said. “They are early dietary interventions—only conducted by corporations rather than health professionals.”

Public-health evidence is unequivocal: taste preferences and consumption habits formed in childhood persist into adulthood. Early exposure to sugar and salt increases lifelong risk of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. Teenagers and young adults were targeted differently but just as deliberately. Music festivals, influencer challenges, and scan-to-win games linked sugary drinks to entertainment, social status, and aspiration. Coca-Cola’s Flytime Fest promotions blurred consumption with access—drink more, attend more. Maggi’s influencer-driven Taste of Christmas campaign reframed seasoning cubes as lifestyle choices rather than sodium-dense additives. “Dietary risk was disguised as lifestyle content,” the report observed.

When charity becomes a health hazard

Perhaps the most ethically troubling finding from a health standpoint was the use of corporate social responsibility as a vehicle for dietary harm. Donations to schools, churches, markets, and NGOs—often involving malt drinks, sweetened beverages, or ultra-processed foods—were presented as acts of compassion. In reality, CAPPA argues, they functioned as brand implantation in trusted spaces. “Nigerian Breweries’ Beer Villages promoted malt drinks as family-friendly,” the report notes, “while alcohol brands remained visible in the same environments.” Knorr’s Share the Good Jollof cook-offs, staged in dozens of communities, normalised heavy seasoning use under the banner of love and togetherness. “These activities generate goodwill that shields companies from scrutiny,” Oluwafemi said. “But from a health perspective, they embed risk where trust is highest.” The parallels with tobacco industry tactics are deliberate. Public-health scholars have long documented how harmful industries use philanthropy to soften resistance and delay regulation. The festive season, CAPPA found, has become a prime opportunity for this playbook.

If physical spaces were saturated, digital platforms were infiltrated. CAPPA’s volunteers tracked festive campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X, capturing how unhealthy food marketing merged seamlessly with entertainment. AI-generated videos, influencer partnerships, hashtag challenges, and promotional lotteries blurred the line between advertising and personal expression.

Coca-Cola’s personalised Share a Coke campaign tied identity to sugar consumption. Bigi’s New Year messages used religious language, aligning sugary drinks with faith and hope. Maggi’s youth-focused digital content embedded seasoning products into aspirational narratives. “For regulators, this is a nightmare,” a CAPPA analyst explained. “These are not adverts you can easily label or ban. They are emotional cues hidden in culture.” From a health perspective, this represents a regulatory gap with measurable consequences. Exposure increases. Accountability disappears. Children and young people—already heavy digital users—receive the most intense messaging.

The health impacts of festive marketing are not evenly distributed. Urban, low-income communities experience the highest exposure. Parks, transport hubs, informal markets, schools, and churches—spaces heavily used by poorer families—were transformed into branded environments with no health warnings. “These are the same communities,” Oluwafemi noted, “that struggle most to access diagnosis and long-term care.”

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As ultra-processed foods displace traditional diets, households are pushed into cycles of illness and out-of-pocket spending. Treatment for hypertension, diabetes, and stroke is expensive and lifelong. An underfunded health system absorbs the downstream costs of private marketing decisions. “Festive consumption today becomes hospital queues tomorrow,” Oluwafemi said.

Policy failure as a health risk

CAPPA’s report is explicit: voluntary self-regulation by industry has failed to protect public health. Advertising codes exist, but enforcement is weak. CSR guidelines are porous. Digital marketing remains largely ungoverned. From a health systems perspective, this leaves Nigeria exposed. CAPPA calls for comprehensive, legally binding restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages—particularly during festive periods when exposure and vulnerability peak. These must cover digital platforms, outdoor advertising, broadcast media, point-of-sale promotions, and influencer marketing.

Equally critical is banning branded CSR activities in schools, religious institutions, and community spaces. “Donations tied to brand visibility are not neutral,” Oluwafemi said. “They are public-health hazards disguised as kindness.” The organisation also reiterates the need to raise Nigeria’s sugar-sweetened beverage tax to at least 50 percent of retail price, in line with WHO recommendations, with revenues earmarked for NCD prevention, treatment, and health system strengthening. Mandatory front-of-pack warning labels would restore information asymmetry that festive marketing deliberately erodes.

But none of this matters without enforcement. “Health policy without enforcement is symbolism,” Oluwafemi warned. “And symbolism does not save lives.” CAPPA’s appeal to journalists is grounded firmly in health ethics. Festive campaigns, the organisation argues, should not be reported as harmless colour stories. Behind every branded concert or charity donation lies a public-health implication. “Journalists are gatekeepers of context,” Oluwafemi said. “The question is not whether a campaign looks generous, but what it does to population health.”

Festive seasons should strengthen social bonds and wellbeing. They should nourish bodies as well as spirits. Instead, CAPPA’s findings suggest, they are being engineered into moments of intensified health risk. The danger is not celebration itself, but its capture. What Nigeria faces, then, is a choice: whether festive joy remains a shared cultural resource—or becomes a recurring trigger for preventable illness. “Public health must be placed above corporate profit,” Oluwafemi concluded. “Because the cost of doing nothing is written not in balance sheets, but in blood pressure readings, insulin prescriptions, and premature deaths.” Until that choice is made, Nigeria’s festivities will continue to arrive with hidden costs—paid quietly, long after the decorations are gone.