The Federal Government has launched a $1 billion social protection programme aimed at helping vulnerable Nigerian families move beyond temporary relief to sustainable livelihoods, economic empowerment, and self-reliance.
The Household Prosperity and Empowerment Social Protection Project, HOPE-SP, was unveiled on Wednesday at the State House Banquet Hall, Abuja, alongside four other initiatives designed to strengthen Nigeria’s humanitarian response and poverty-reduction system.
The other programmes are the One-Humanitarian-One Poverty Response System, OHOPRS; Emergency Cash Transfer Programme; the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction Ministerial Blueprint; and Humanity First Magazine.
Speaking at the launch, First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu said the initiatives were designed to improve the lives of Nigerians, particularly families and communities struggling with economic and social vulnerabilities.
Delivering a keynote address themed “From Palliatives to Pathways,” Mrs Tinubu said the programmes reflected a shift from short-term assistance towards interventions capable of helping vulnerable households recover, build resilience, and become economically independent.
She said the initiatives had become particularly important as the economic reforms of President Bola Tinubu’s administration continued to work through the economy, acknowledging that many households were still facing difficulties and required support.
“Under the leadership of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, our nation is implementing far-reaching reforms to strengthen the economy, lay a solid foundation for sustainable growth, and shared prosperity.
“As these reforms continue to take effect, we must recognise that, given the size of our population and available resources, many families still face challenges and require our collective support,” she said.
According to the First Lady, HOPE-SP would improve the way vulnerable households are identified and assisted by ensuring that interventions respond to their specific circumstances rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.
She said the programme would provide immediate assistance to stabilise households facing hardship while connecting them to opportunities capable of putting them on a path towards recovery, empowerment, and self-reliance.
“The first initiative, the Household Prosperity and Empowerment Social Protection Project, is an important step towards strengthening how we identify and respond to vulnerable households facing various challenges by listening to their specific needs before taking action.
“It is designed to provide immediate stabilisation assistance while placing the households on a pathway to recovery, empowerment, and self-reliance,” Mrs Tinubu said.
She explained that the One-Humanitarian-One Poverty Response System would establish a coordinated national mechanism for humanitarian emergencies, social protection, and poverty reduction.
The system, she said, was expected to reduce duplication across government interventions by creating unified national registries through which poor and vulnerable households could be identified, assisted, and monitored as their economic circumstances improve.
The Emergency Cash Transfer Programme would provide rapid financial support to families affected by economic shocks, while the Ministerial Blueprint would translate the humanitarian and poverty-reduction components of the Renewed Hope Agenda into measurable programmes and outcomes.
Mrs Tinubu said effective planning, coordination, and accountability must remain central to the delivery of social interventions.
She described Humanity First Magazine as another important part of the new framework, saying it would document the experiences of Nigerians whose circumstances had been changed through government interventions.
The First Lady commended the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr Bernard Doro, and officials of the ministry for developing the programmes.
“I commend the Honourable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr Bernard M. Doro and his team for these initiatives that will transform our humanitarian endeavours from temporary assistance to lasting pathways that promote resilience, self-reliance, prosperity, and a dignified life for every Nigerian,” she said.
Doro said the initiatives represented a fundamental restructuring of the country’s social protection architecture, with the government seeking to move away from repeatedly distributing palliatives towards helping households escape poverty permanently.
He said while the administration’s economic reforms, including the removal of petrol subsidy and unification of the foreign exchange market, had strengthened government revenues and investor confidence, mechanisms were also required to protect ordinary Nigerians from economic shocks.
According to him, the objective was to move “from reactive relief to anticipatory social protection” and from managing poverty to reducing it.
The minister identified fragmentation as a major weakness in Nigeria’s existing social intervention system, saying programmes operated by ministries, departments, agencies, and different tiers of government had frequently functioned independently of one another.
He said this had resulted in duplication, with some people benefiting from several interventions while other vulnerable households received little or nothing.
Under the new framework, Doro said the government would shift its attention from individual programmes to the household itself and from merely reporting how many people received assistance to measuring whether that assistance actually improved their economic circumstances.
Vulnerable households would first be identified and their needs assessed before appropriate interventions were provided. Their progress would then be monitored through what the government described as a “poverty graduation pathway” towards economic inclusion and self-reliance.
Doro said the system would be supported by unified data, digital delivery infrastructure, new financing arrangements, and real-time poverty intelligence, with closer collaboration among federal, state, and local governments and development partners.
He said OHOPRS would operate as a single window for humanitarian and poverty-reduction interventions, ending the practice in which different government agencies maintain separate registers and databases.
Existing databases, according to him, would be integrated into a unified platform anchored on the National Social Register, which currently contains about 20 million households.
Beneficiaries would be tracked from identification through intervention and eventual exit into a growth register, while a digital dashboard would allow the government to monitor interventions across the country.
Doro also announced plans for a National Poverty Intelligence Lab, saying the success of social programmes would increasingly be judged by the number of households protected from hardship, brought into productive economic activity and ultimately lifted out of poverty, rather than by the quantity of materials distributed.
Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Atiku Bagudu, said an effective social protection system required cooperation across all levels of government.
He said the administration’s ambition of building a $1 trillion economy by 2030 must be accompanied by deliberate policies to ensure that growth and economic opportunities reach Nigerians at the grassroots.
Bagudu pointed to the government’s ward development initiative covering the country’s 8,809 wards, saying the programme was intended to identify the factors driving poverty and exclusion at community level and transform the wards into centres of economic opportunity and inclusion.
He said the government was also increasing attention to peace, security and critical areas of social protection to prevent Nigerians who were economically active from falling into poverty because of domestic or international shocks.
According to him, global developments, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict and instability in the Middle East, continued to affect households and economies, reinforcing the need for stronger social safety nets.
Bagudu said Nigeria already had substantial resources committed to social protection and poverty eradication, including a World Bank portfolio of about $6 billion, but argued that improved coordination was necessary to achieve greater impact.
The challenge, he said, was not simply finding more resources but ensuring that existing programmes and funding across federal, state and local governments were properly aligned and efficiently deployed.
Borno State Governor, Professor Babagana Zulum, welcomed the initiatives, saying social protection remained critical to addressing vulnerability and tackling some of the conditions that fuel insecurity.
Drawing from Borno’s experience with prolonged insurgency and humanitarian crises, Zulum said sustainable security required government to go beyond emergency assistance and confront underlying problems such as poverty, inequality and social exclusion.
He said reducing vulnerability and creating sustainable economic opportunities for citizens would contribute to building stronger communities and lasting peace.
Zulum also called for continued research into issues affecting identity and national security and congratulated the Federal Government and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction on the rollout of the new social protection framework.
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