The Conflict Research Network West Africa (CORN) has called on President Bola Tinubu to overhaul Nigeria’s current social protection architecture and go beyond the suspension of the minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
Tarila Marclint Ebiede, CORN director, who made the call, also want the president to promptly suspend the minister. He recalled that the Research Network had warned the president to be more vigilant on his social protection programmes, which it said were at risk of being hijacked by politicians.
In a statement signed by Ebiede, the CORN boss asked President Tinubu to digitise the cash transfer programmes and strengthen accountability mechanisms in all social protection programmes being implemented by the Federal Government and its agencies.
CORN also called on international development partners and private sector investment in social protection in Nigeria to commit to strengthening social protection institutions in Nigeria.
According to him, President Tinubu needs “to revisit the 2017 National Social Protection Policy (NSPP), including subsequent revisions in 2021, anchored in the Ministry of National Planning to ensure policy coordination and coherence between the different federal agencies involved in delivering the social protection objectives of the Federal Government.
Specifically, CORN called on Tinubu to set up a framework within the Federal Government to ensure that all ministries, agencies and parastatals with a social protection mandate are working in a coherent and coordinated manner towards a shared objective of “promoting social justice, equity and inclusive productive growth” and “addressing poverty, unemployment, social and economic vulnerabilities, inequality, exclusion and other threats to sustainable development.”
Ebiede recalled that the ongoing administration of social protection had been flagged by researchers within the network in its 2023 Conference held in Abuja where researchers at the conference “called on President Tinubu to quickly put in place mechanisms to ensure that the social protection policies of his government are not hijacked by political actors.”
He noted that the failure of the ministry to achieve its mandate would undermine peacebuilding and worsen insecurity in the country as the number of vulnerable persons was increasing.
