Nigeria’s Social Protection Crossroads
John Onyeukwu
Nigeria’s Social Protection Crossroads
From fragmented schemes to a unified
framework of solidarity
When I recently moderated the second session of the Dialogue on Social Protection in Nigeria in Abuja, the theme, “Toward a Unified Social Protection Framework”, felt less like a policy aspiration and more like a survival imperative.
At the table sat federal programme managers, alongside state-level Cash Transfer Units, Ministries of Women Affairs, and Economic Planning Commissions. Civil society leaders and innovation actors also weighed in, bringing community perspectives and technology-driven ideas. Their vantage points were different, their mandates varied, yet the frustration was the same: Nigeria’s social protection system is fragmented, duplicative, underfunded, and too often politicized. Participants spoke not only of programmes that overlap, but of citizens caught in the cracks, some enrolled in multiple schemes, and many excluded altogether.
This sense of crisis is underscored by the numbers. Extreme poverty affects about 32% of Nigerians, roughly 71 million people, living below the $2.15/day line. Multidimensional poverty is even higher: 63% of the population, or about 133 million people, face overlapping deprivations in health, education, and living standards (NBS, UNDP, OPHI 2022). At the same time, Nigeria is home to 53.5 million middle-class citizens, around 24% of the population, making it Africa’s second-largest consumer market after Egypt. Nigeria thus ranks #1 in Africa in both middle-class size and extreme-poor population size. The World Bank (2023) further warns that poverty reduction has stagnated, with nearly 95 million Nigerians projected to live in poverty by 2025 if current trends persist. This duality, a large consumer market alongside Africa’s largest concentration of deprivation, defines the challenge of social protection.
The fragmentation that Nigeria is grappling with is more than an administrative glitch, it is an ethical failure.
Social protection, at its core, is a moral promise. It is how a society declares: we will not leave the vulnerable behind. But Nigeria’s record suggests otherwise. Oxfam (2024) reports that 10% of Nigerians control 90% of national wealth, while over 83 million citizens live on less than ₦3,100 ($2) a day. This inequality is not accidental. It is the product of deliberate policy choices, corporate tax breaks, monopolistic capture, and chronic underinvestment in public services.
Here lies the paradox: while tens of millions have joined the middle class, tens of millions more remain trapped in poverty. Justice, in this context, demands a system that narrows this gulf. Fragmentation instead entrenches it, reflecting a lack of empathy and an unwillingness to treat the poor as rights-bearing citizens entitled to protection, not as political clients.
Politics in Nigeria has long weaponized welfare (some argue poverty). From Abuja to local councils, programmes are rolled out in the heat of electoral cycles, and then abandoned once the votes are counted. A local government representative at the Dialogue captured it bluntly: “There is a disconnect between registration and reach, people are enrolled but rarely paid.”
At the federal level, ministries compete for visibility. Despite the National Social Protection Policy (NSPP), there is no binding law to enforce coordination. The result is duplication: at least 27 different programmes have operated in parallel since 2016, according to monitoring data. Citizens are left confused, some double-counted, many excluded.
This political patronage sustains Nigeria’s duality. Small elite entrenches its privileges, while the majority are offered fragmented, politicized welfare. Without reform, the middle class risks shrinking back into poverty, while the poor remain trapped. A unified framework, legislated and depoliticized, is necessary to rebalance power toward inclusion.
Fragmentation also bleeds scarce resources. Each programme builds its own delivery system, hires its own staff, and designs its own data platform, often in the same communities.
Analysts estimate that 25–30% of programme budgets are lost to administrative duplication. At the same time, government granted ₦5 trillion in corporate tax incentives in 2024, nearly one-fifth of the federal budget, even as millions went without basic support. As Oxfam’s John Makina put it: “This is wealth transferred from the public to the powerful.”
This dual drain, elite capture on one side, waste on the other, erodes the fiscal space for meaningful impact. The African Development Bank (AfDB, 2023) notes that Nigeria spends less than 1.2% of GDP on social protection, far below the Sub-Saharan African average of 2.8%, and well below countries like Kenya and South Africa. This underinvestment reinforces Nigeria’s two realities: the middle class, whose purchasing power sustains consumer markets, and the extreme poor, whose deprivation undermines stability.
The Dialogue produced three clear recommendations: Legislate the NSPP to guarantee continuity beyond administrations; Adopt a shared national beneficiary registry linking federal, state, and local interventions; Reward convergence, not just compliance, by incentivizing states and LGAs that harmonize programmes. It is important to commend the role of David Ugolor, Executive Director of African Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), and the coalition of partners who convened and facilitated the Dialogue with such determination. Their leadership was instrumental in framing the Abuja Platform as more than a communiqué, but as a potential national mechanism for coordination and reform. What is now required is equal commitment from government at all levels, alongside civil society and development partners, to drive this platform from promise into practice
Crucially, the Abuja Platform for Social Protection, proposed in the Dialogue communiqué, offers a practical co-design mechanism. Convened properly, it could function as a standing national roundtable, bringing ministries, states, LGAs, civil society, development partners, and private sector actors into one structured conversation. Unlike past ad-hoc committees, it would be designed as a permanent space for collaboration, standard-setting, and accountability. Such a platform recognizes a hard truth: no single ministry or government tier can solve Nigeria’s social protection challenge alone. And no system can endure if it sustains one Nigeria of middle-class affluence and another of extreme poverty. It will take a coalition bound not by control, but by coordination.
As one participant observed during the Dialogue: “The poor don’t know if a programme is federal, state, or donor, they only know if it shows up.” That must be the test of reform.
Nigeria stands at a crossroads. On one side lies the status quo: duplication, inequality, and elite capture. On the other lies the possibility of solidarity: a unified framework that treats social protection not as a handout, but as a constitutional guarantee of citizenship.
Nigeria today stands as a paradox in motion. On one side, more than 53 million Nigerians belong to the middle class, sustaining one of Africa’s largest consumer markets, with rising aspirations in housing, education, and technology. On the other side, over 71 million live in extreme poverty, struggling to secure daily meals, healthcare, and dignified livelihoods. This stark coexistence of prosperity and deprivation has made Nigeria both a symbol of Africa’s promise and its fragility.
What this reveals is that poverty in Nigeria is not merely a matter of statistics — it is a matter of systems. Inequality has been engineered through policy decisions that favor a few while neglecting the many. As Oxfam reminds us, the concentration of wealth in the hands of 10 percent of the population is not an accident of history, but the predictable outcome of choices: unchecked monopolies, poorly targeted subsidies, and elite capture of public funds.
Yet the lesson is equally clear: if inequality is man-made, then it can be unmade. Systems of exclusion can be redesigned into systems of inclusion. Social protection, when unified and reformed, becomes not just a safety net, but the architecture of solidarity — a foundation on which millions can build resilience and opportunity.
The challenge before Nigeria, then, is more than technocratic. It is about rebuilding trust in the social contract. Citizens must believe that their government has the will to act fairly, and institutions must be structured to deliver without leakage or politicization. This requires courage to legislate, discipline to enforce, and imagination to co-design a system that reflects the dignity of all Nigerians.
In the end, the crossroads we face is not simply between growth and stagnation. It is between fragmentation and solidarity, between a Nigeria that deepens division and one that chooses inclusion. The choice is ours, and the urgency cannot be overstated.
http://www.policy.hu/onyeukwu/
“Let us move forward to fight poverty, to establish equity, and assure peace for the next generation.”
-- James D. Wolfensohn
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