By Mary Agidi

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Nigeria has over 10 Social Protection Programmes ranging from cash transfers, health insurance, and pension schemes launched during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, in addition to those initiated by previous governments.

At the unveiling of the National Social Protection Policy (NSPP) in August 2016, the former President acknowledged that Nigeria had indeed made significant progress through democratization. However, he lamented that despite the various initiatives implemented by preceding governments at the macro and sectoral levels, Nigeria had not recorded significant progress in translating these economic reforms into improved well-being for the generality of Nigerians hence, the need for the Social Protection Policy.

“As a people, Nigerians have demonstrated resilience in the face of many challenges (natural and human). We desire that fewer Nigerians face similar challenges in the future. It is our responsibility, therefore, to foster a more inclusive development pathway for the country. This and other factors prompted the formulation of the National Social Protection Policy.

“The National Social Protection Policy is consistent with our national aspirations of becoming one of the top 20 largest economies in the world by 2020. It provides a framework for promoting social justice, equity, and inclusive productive growth. It is a transformative tool for addressing poverty, unemployment, social and economic vulnerabilities, inequality, exclusion, and other threats to sustainable development. While population growth will continue to be a determining factor in our economic, social, and political progress, this Policy will harness available resources into investments in people, our most valuable asset, to optimize our human capital potential.

“I congratulate the Ministry of Budget and National Planning for this initiative and for putting this policy together. There is no better legacy than policies that spread hope and prosperity to the economically disadvantaged and most vulnerable in society. I also acknowledge the support provided by UNICEF and other development partners in the formulation of the policy. It has strengthened our partnership in addressing some contemporary global challenges. In line with the principle of federalism, I urge all States and Local Governments in the Federation to align their social protection interventions with this Policy,” his message reads.

The NSPP was intentionally launched as a new approach to tackling poverty, focusing on vulnerable groups like women, youths, the physically challenged, and market women, among others.

Before the inception of NSPP, there were some social intervention programmes by previous governments at both the federal and state levels. They include SURE-P, In-Care of the Poor (COPE), and Health Fee Waiver for pregnant women and under-five children. These and many more were initiated to tackle poverty.

The Buhari-led administration, however, introduced this policy to make it more effective with renamed interventions like TraderMoni, Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO), N-Power, and many others.

With billions of naira allocated for these interventions, has the policy and its interventions reduced the level of poverty in Nigeria? Has it met the needs of the target audience? These are the questions Nigerians are asking, considering the billions of naira injected into these Programmes.

Rising from the third edition of the Social Protection Cross Learning Summit (SPECS-2024), held in Abuja on May 28th, stakeholders at the meeting provided an overview of Social Protection in Nigeria. SPECS-2024, spearheaded by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), the European Union, and the federal ministry of finance and economy, affirmed that Nigeria has a robust social protection policy with a life-cycle approach, but with low coverage, only 11% of the population is covered by one form of the programme or another.

The gathering identified a weak delivery system of the Social Protection Programmes and recommended improvement in that aspect to support interoperability with other social sector interventions.

According to the communique signed by UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Ms. Cristian Munduate, EU Ambassador in Nigeria, Ms. Samuela Isopi, who are Co-lead Social Protection Development Partners, and the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, SPECS-2024 underscored the importance of a comprehensive and integrated approach to social protection in Nigeria.

It recommends the establishment of a Social Protection Council, as provided for by the NSPP, to oversee and coordinate social protection initiatives across different sectors and levels of government, to ensure cohesive and efficient delivery of services.

Other action points from SPECS-2024 to improve coverage include the resumption of the delivery of the National Homegrown Feeding Programmes with improvements, to provide nutritious meals for vulnerable children; the introduction of a Universal Child Benefit to provide financial support to all children, and reduce childhood poverty; the extension of social protection to workers in the informal economy, including farmers; and the promotion of women’s empowerment through scaling up ‘cash plus’ approaches to tackle gender inequality and shift harmful and discriminatory gender norms.

Also, the programme recommends accelerating the implementation of the existing cash transfer programme to mitigate the impact of current inflationary pressures; expanding the social register in collaboration with State governments to ensure that the poor and vulnerable in all LGAs are captured to help with effective planning and design of robust and inclusive social protection programmes across states. This becomes necessary as SPECS-2024 pointed out that Nigeria has a fair National Social Register with over 60 million individuals.

SPECS-2024, which focused on three critical areas: increasing coverage, improving coordination, and ensuring adequate financing of social protection systems, called for the development of a robust and interoperable Management Information System (MIS) to improve the delivery and monitoring of social protection programmes, noting that MIS will facilitate enhanced data sharing and integration across the various social protection schemes.

Giving an insight into the social protection interventions, the Ondo State Coordinator of Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO), Mr. Bankole Olaoluwa, identified targeting as one of the challenges of the programme, which he said meant how to ensure that each intervention can benefit the people that are really in need of the particular social protection.

“For instance, if you design a programme for Kehinde and the programme does not benefit Kehinde, but it benefits Taye, that project is dead on arrival. However, in recent times, we have a project that is targeting the poor and vulnerable households in Nigeria.

“And for us in Ondo State, in 2017, the State Government established an office known as the State Operation Coordinating Unit with the mandate of establishing a single register of poor and vulnerable households.

“Because that is most important. You need to have a system in place that will tell us the characteristics and features of people who are poor and vulnerable in our society. And that we have done in Ondo State, and it is equally replicated in other states of the Federation, including Abuja. That is when we talk about this issue of a social or single register of poor and vulnerable households. So, generally speaking, I believe that in the last few years, we have had improvements in social protection issues in Nigeria.

“For instance, we now have in place what is known as the National Social Protection Policy because the starting point is to have a policy, to have a system in place that can address this challenge of the poor and vulnerable in our society. In Ondo State, we are the first sub-national government in Nigeria that has social protection law that was signed into law sometime in 2017.”

He corroborated the SPECS-2024 submission to further strengthen the existing structures that are in place to ensure that the government can deliver social protection to the people.

“And we also have the issue of a funding challenge or funding gap. It’s also an issue that needs to be addressed as far as social protection is concerned. For instance, we discovered that after the removal of the subsidy, we now have more people who are predisposed to being poor and vulnerable.

“At the time we were putting in place the social register, there were people who were not poor at that time. But because of the challenge of the removal of the subsidy, such people are now predisposed to being poor or vulnerable. So, what I’m saying is that we need to look at the issue of funding to make it sustainable.”

The finance and economy analyst, however, called for collaborative efforts from well-to-do Nigerians to cater for the needy, noting that the government cannot do it alone, saying: “We know that there are so many things begging for the government’s attention, and social protection is one of them. The government has the issue of roads, education, health services, etc, that are crying for attention. That is why we also need people of goodwill. We need organizations that can also come to the aid of poor and vulnerable households in our community.”

He announced the readiness of the Ondo State SOCU to provide a list of any vulnerable groups to individuals who desire to reach out to them, affirming that they have a social register that captures vulnerable groups across the 18 local government areas of the state.

Meanwhile, another concern raised by the partners about the success of Social Protection Interventions is the sincerity on the part of the coordinators. The case of the past and recent Humanitarian Affairs Ministers, who were alleged to have diverted billions of funds budgeted for social interventions, aroused feelings of doubt about the effectiveness of the policy.