Despite strong economic growth, 54% of the Nigerian population remains living in poverty. In
recent years, the government and its development partners have sought to develop social
protection instruments as a mechanism to tackle such high rates of poverty and vulnerability in
the country and to support progress in both the economic and the social spheres. As such,
social protection is now emerging as a policy objective.
This synthesis report is part of the project, ‘Social Protection Diagnostic and Forward Agenda
for UNICEF’, aims to support the government of Nigeria in realising its overarching
development strategy (Vision 20: 2020) and developing a national social protection strategy.
The project has five thematic reports: a mapping of social protection and its effectiveness, the
role of cash transfers in Nigeria, the links between social protection and HIV and AIDS and
social protection and child protection and fiscal space.
The study drew on both primary and secondary research carried out between January and June
2011. A comprehensive review of literature was carried out on social protection, HIV and AIDS
and child protection in Nigeria, including an analysis of policy and strategy documents,
programme documents, impact evaluations and other grey literature. Key informant interviews
(KIIs) were undertaken with stakeholders at the national and state levels (including relevant
government, donor, international and national non-governmental organisation (NGOs), civil
society and academic actors). Case studies were carried out in four states – Adamawa, Benue,
Edo and Lagos – selected on the basis of previous and current implementation of the cash
transfer In Care of the Poor (COPE) programme and existence of HIV and AIDS and child
protection programmes; prevalence of HIV and AIDS and specific child protection
vulnerabilities; state poverty profiles and susceptibility to shocks and stresses; and a
geographical spread across the northern and southern regions.
Social protection policy has been under discussion since 2004 at both national and regional
level, but despite a chapter committed to social protection in the implementation plan of the
national development plan, Vision 20: 2020, this has not resulted in significant levels of
programme implementation. The main projects currently underway are three small-scale
federal government-led programmes: the COPE conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme,
subsidised maternal and child health care (MCH) provision and the Community-based Health
Insurance Scheme (CBHIS). Other social assistance programmes are implemented in an ad
hoc manner, run by government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) at state level.
These include child savings accounts, disability grants, health waivers, education support (e.g.
free uniforms) and nutrition support. Other programmes led by donors include CCTs for girls’
education in three states and programmes that include social protection subcomponents (not
as the primary objective): HIV and AIDS and orphan and vulnerable children (OVC)
programmes, providing nutrition, health and education support. Labour market programmes
include federal- and state-level agricultural subsidies/inputs, youth skills and employment
programmes – but these are not necessarily targeted at the poor and are often implemented
at the discretion of the state rather than as part of a coordinated response to unemployment
and underemployment and constraints to agricultural productivity.
We draw on Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler’s (2004) transformative social protection
framework, which takes into consideration both economic and social sources of risk and is
based on a framework whereby social protection promotes social equity as well as economic
growth. Social equity laws and legislation can be seen as part of the transformative social
protection agenda. Nigeria has passed the Civil and Political Rights Covenant, the Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights Covenant, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, only
the latter has been domesticated into national law – and this not by all states. Meanwhile,
implementation of these laws is weak at best. There has been limited, if any, conceptual link
made by the government between the broader regulatory policies of equality and rights and
their importance to social protection policies.