By Faridat Salifu
The Federal Government on Wednesday reaffirmed its commitment to mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) implementation across all packaging sectors in Nigeria, with a strong emphasis on plastics, ahead of the rollout of new 2025 EPR guidelines.
Speaking at a one-day capacity-building workshop in Abuja, the Minister of Environment, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, said the revised EPR regulations and packaging-specific guidelines, set to take effect later this year, would impose mandatory obligations on all producers, importers, and brand owners to recover and recycle post-consumer packaging materials.
The event, hosted by the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) with technical support from adelphi and funding from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, forms part of the ongoing PROTEGO project for marine litter prevention in the Gulf of Guinea.
Lawal described the EPR framework as a “paradigm shift” that places the environmental burden of plastic waste and other problematic materials squarely on producers, noting that Nigeria’s approach integrates both circular economy goals and social equity objectives.
The new 2025 packaging guidelines and the accompanying draft National Environmental (Plastic Waste Control) Regulations will require traceability systems, annual recovery targets, and robust reporting from companies across the plastics value chain.
The minister also stressed the importance of informal sector inclusion, calling waste pickers and community-level aggregators the “unsung heroes” of Nigeria’s recycling economy and announcing plans to support their formal integration through cooperatives, recognition schemes, and incentives.
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He listed sector-specific compliance models already in place, including the Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA), the E-Waste Producer Responsibility Organisation of Nigeria (EPRON), and the Alliance for Responsible Battery Recycling (ARBR), while noting the expected roles of REDIN and the Circular Economy Innovation Partnership (CEIP) under the new plastic packaging regime.
In his opening remarks, NESREA Director-General Prof. Innocent Barikor, emphasized that marine pollution and plastic waste pose critical threats to Nigeria’s ecosystems, public health, and economic sustainability, and said the agency will intensify enforcement of EPR mandates under its statutory powers.
Barikor called EPR “a transformative tool” that shifts environmental accountability from public waste systems to producers, while incentivizing sustainable product design and post-consumer waste recovery.
He outlined key workshop goals, including improving stakeholder understanding of EPR systems, showcasing global best practices, and introducing practical toolkits to guide EPR programme implementation across Nigeria.
The NESREA boss thanked adelphi’s Head of Circular Economy Programme, Amar Munnolimath, and PROTEGO Project Director Paolo Facco for their technical support, and commended German government funding for enabling the training.
He also recognized the contributions of Clem Urgoji and other partners in coordinating the event and mobilizing key actors across government, industry, and civil society.
Both speakers urged participants including policymakers, businesses, recyclers, and civil society organizations to use the workshop to advance collaboration, improve compliance readiness, and help deliver Nigeria’s circular economy targets through effective EPR schemes.
The PROTEGO project, which runs from July 2024 to June 2027 in Nigeria and Ghana, is supporting local authorities with EPR implementation, marine litter mitigation, data systems, and capacity development for regulatory enforcement.
