The National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) has rejected the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria’s (MAN’s), calls for the suspension of the newly gazetted National Environmental (Plastic Waste Control) Regulations, 2026.
The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer the agency, Prof. Innocent Barikor, who was represented by Director Inspection and Enforcement, Dr. Christopher Beka, at a public forum declared that the implementation of the regulations was on course and would not be stepped down.
According to him, far from being an “anti-industry death sentence” as the manufacturers descried the regulations, the Act represents a multi-billion naira green economy engine designed to turn trash into domestic cash.
Responding to claims that the government is imposing a sudden, blanket ban on all single-use plastics, Barikor clarified that the interpretation circulating in industrial circles as outrightyly misleading and not factual about the provisions of the National Environmental (Plastic Waste Control) Regulations, 2026.
The environmentalist explained that the strict 80-micron minimum thickness limit applied exclusively to plastic carrier/shopping bags made from thin film. It does not touch critical packaging across sensitive sectors such as: Pharmaceutical blister packs and medical consumables. Food and beverage preservation films, Agricultural and logistics heavy-duty wraps
He clarified: ”It is misleading to paint this as a wholesale wipeout of plastic packaging. The target is low-value, unrecyclable, easily littered film that ends up choking our drains and marine ecosystems.”
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On manufacturers’ concerns over likely shutdown of their assembly lines and capital obsolescence if the regulations are enforced, Barikor states that there is a highly structured, multi-year transition runway created to enable manufacturers have some years to recalibrate their supply chains and amortize their machinery investment
He assured that requirements regarding Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reporting, eco-labeling, and corporate traceability would be gradually introduced through continuous stakeholder engagements in order to avert devastating shocks in the system.
While MAN has been expressing its concerns on the massive job losses to the implementation of the new regulations, the NESREA boss maintained the biggest threat to Nigerian businesses remained not the regulation, but continued inaction by manufacturers and other stakeholders to manage plastic pollution, which has been creating socio-economic problems, including urban flooding, infrastructure damage, and soaring public health sanitation bills.
Under the Polluter-Pays Principle, he pointed out that brand owners who profit from placing high volumes of plastic on the market must legally co-fund the cleanup infrastructure. Instead of killing jobs, this shift formalizes and expands the waste ecosystem:
According to him, the 2026 regulations contain a powerful localization clause: All recycled PET (rPET) used to meet the legal targets must be sourced directly from certified food-grade recycling plants within Nigeria
Barikor maintained that the regulations effectively stop international brands from buying cheap recycled pellets abroad to hit their green metrics, creating a guaranteed, high-volume domestic market for Nigerian waste-pickers, aggregators, and local industrial recyclers, while saving critical foreign exchange.
The agency’s chief also debunked the manufacturers’ claims that the policy lacks empirical backing, pointing out that Nigeria has historically suffered from fragmented data on plastic production and environmental leakage.
To address this challenge, the NESREA’s Director-General maintained that the regulations introduced a state-of-the-art Central Data Collection Platform and National Material Registry.
Bakinor insisted that rather than delaying the implementation of the new regulations by conducting a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) as being canvassed by the manufacturers, data-gathering tools will be deployed to run real-time implementation reviews without stalling ongoing environmental protection drive in the country.
