Report of Baseline Study on the Implementation of Social Protection Programmes in Nigeria

Introduction

The National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP) is the flagship of the current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari. N-SIP coincides with Mr. President’s desire to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within the next 10 years. By its adoption in the sub-national level, N-SIP is beginning to occupy a space in inter-governmental programme formulation and implementation. However, the pace of adoption by the Nigerian Federating States (FS) is rather insufficient, hence the project ‘Enhancing Social Protection Programme in Nigeria’ (ESPPIN), implemented by the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), with the support of Bread for World –Protestant Development Service (Germany).

This baseline study illuminates the conceptual ‘social investment’, ‘social policy’, and ‘social protection’. Thereafter, the policy diffusion framework is adopted as a potent lens of viewing public institutions, norms and programmes, as well as the diffusion innovation theory to explain the movement of the N-SIP from the Nigerian Federal Government (FG) as ‘innovator’, to the states as ‘adopters’, of the programme. The methods adopted in this baseline study were a combination of desk research and key informant interviews (KIIs). In identifying the policy and institutional framework, the study draws on decades of ‘international commitments’ to human well-being, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the fundamental laws of the land, the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, as well as the 2017 National Social Protection Policy.

The study finds some lessons, which are germane for learning in the course of N-SIP implementation for future practice, particularly, in the five target states (Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, and Ekiti).

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