Victor Ikechukwu Ogharanduku,2 Saratu Kujiyat-Iliyasu3 and Safiya Shuaibu Isa4
Legal frameworks are important for institutionalising and strengthening social protection systems. Two states in Nigeria, Jigawa and Zamfara, have enacted social protection laws. This article explores how the process of enacting such a law is influenced by state-level politics and local contexts, and how the activities of a project financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) contributed to much greater understanding and acceptance of social protection in both states. Primary data collected through in-depth interviews with state and non-state stakeholders and project staff was analysed to tease out the political, cultural, and power dynamics involved in enacting the laws. Findings show that a range of factors aimed at building the case for, and understanding of, social protection across a range of stakeholders was critical, and that a fairly standard package of tools employed in advocating for institutionalising social protection was influenced considerably by domestic political dynamics.
Social protection, legal frameworks, social protection institutionalisation, domestic politics of social protection, social protection adoption, social assistance, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Nigeria.
Legal frameworks are important for institutionalising, helping to formalise social protection rights, and systems strengthening. However, enacting a social protection law is context specific, iterative rather than linear, sequenced, and complex, because it encompasses social insurance, social assistance, labour market interventions, social services, or specific laws, in line with international standards and principles (Kaltenborn et al. 2017; TRANSFORM 2017). In Nigeria, despite social protection being a long-standing component of government social policy, public finance, and development policies (Holmes et al. 2012), interest in social assistance only gained traction in the 2000s (Aiyede et al. 2015; Onyeonoru 2018), leading to the initiation of a limited number of social protection programmes. Beyond this, social protection was just an uncoordinated array of ad hoc programmes (Hagen-Zanker and Holmes 2012) without legislative frameworks. However, the 2015 general elections and emergence of the country as the poverty capital of the world (Staff Reports 2020; Uzoho 2021) spurred policy interest and reforms, leading to the 2017 National Social Protection Policy (NSPP) and the establishment of several institutions (the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, the National Social Safety-Net Coordinating Office, and the National Cash Transfer Office) to lead implementation.
Within the Nigerian federation, the states of Jigawa and Zamfara enacted social protection laws in 2022, with the assistance of the Expanding Social Protection for Inclusive Development (ESPID) project. Initiated by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and implemented by Save the Children International (SCI) and Action against Hunger (AAH), ESPID is the third phase of the Child Development Grant Programme (CDGP). It focuses on institutionalising and strengthening social protection systems through four core pillars: advocacy, capacity building, systems strengthening, and evidence generation and dissemination (SCI 2021).
This study, informed by these enactments, looked in-depth at the influence of state-level politics, local context, and how the CDGP and the ESPID project shaped greater understanding and acceptance of social protection. This is important because of the limited understanding of why African political elites are adopting and institutionalising social assistance programmes, the politics behind this (Awortwi 2017; Lavers and Hickey 2015, 2021), and the dynamics of the legislating process.
Following this introduction, Section 2 provides a brief review of the related literature. Section 3 then looks at the methodology, Section 4 discusses the results of the research, and Section 5 concludes the discussions of the article.
What is relatively new in Africa’s social protection is having ‘a formal written policy instrument’ that provides for the transfer of public money by the state to its citizens or residents assessed as deprived, vulnerable, and trapped in poverty (Awortwi 2017: 1), particularly social assistance instruments following the exponential rise of social assistance adoption (Niño-Zarazúa et al. 2012). This is a significant development in the social policy space of African countries, and the politics and political economy behind this have been the focus of a number of scholarly works (Lavers and Hickey 2021). While the politics and political economy of social protection in a number of African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) have been the subject of a considerable number of studies, this area is under-researched in the case of Nigeria. Hence, social protection or social assistance adoption and institutionalisation remains poorly understood in the country.
The existence of a social protection law is foundational for social protection. Evidence shows that a law can serve to clarify individual rights and obligations, enhance the predictability and adequacy of benefits, strengthen institutional capacities, promote transparency and accountability, provide safeguards against corruption, and establish a stable and regular funding base (ILO 2016; TRANSFORM 2017). However, enacting a social protection law is not without contentious political decisions (Barrientos and Pellissery 2012) and realignments of existing power relations between and among stakeholders within a society.
Social protection laws are legal frameworks contained in national constitutions, which provide the basis for detailed regulation by constitutionally mandated government agencies. In Africa, few countries (e.g. Mozambique) have a national law specific to social protection, not to talk of subnational entities. What is prevalent is that countries have statements in their constitutions that obligate the state to provide social protection, of which the majority are not justiciable (e.g. Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia). Only a handful of countries, such as South Africa and Kenya, actually have social protection explicitly provided for in their constitutions and which is justiciable (Devereux 2017). However, most countries now have national strategies or policies which are often implemented at the discretion of the regime in power.
Politics and political economy play key roles in social protection adoption and institutionalisation. While politics plays a critical role in shaping social protection expansion (Barrientos and Pellissery 2012; Aiyede et al. 2015; Awortwi 2017), the causal links run in both directions; social protection can also transform politics, potentially building social cohesion (Mkandawire 2001, 2005; Babajanian 2012) and social contracts. Nonetheless, politics is viewed as a barrier to social protection coverage, financing, and sustainability (Awortwi 2017), and its influence in the enactment of social protection legislation at subnational levels in discourse has received limited attention.
Many other factors – international donors’ advocacy and financing; expanding democracy and democratic politics; domestic politics; transnational ideas; political will of national elites; election competitiveness; elite perceptions of vulnerability in the face of distributional crisis; and transnational policy coalitions (Niño-Zarazúa et al. 2012; Lavers and Hickey 2015) – have combined differentially to trigger and influence social protection adoption and institutionalisation. This has also been dependent on the level of development of a country and how important social protection is seen in addressing poverty and vulnerability (Lavers and Hickey 2021).
These factors can be categorised as either internal or external. A question of interest is which category (internal or external) has been more influential, or what mix and scale of internal and external factors are responsible for social protection laws? Further, the focus has been at the national level to the exclusion of occurrences at subnational levels (i.e. states and provinces), despite the fact that many countries are federations. In Nigeria, federating units spend more providing social protection interventions even with the limited fiscal space at their disposal, including making progress in institutionalisation (i.e. laws), compared to the federal government (Holmes et al. 2012; Okere and Okeyika 2016).
This was a qualitative study. Primary data was collected through key informant interviews (KIIs) with stakeholders across government, civil society, and the ESPID team, based on level of participation in the law-making process, using structured questionnaires. Interview questions focused on what legal frameworks existed in the state before the projects; what roles SCI and AAH played in engendering understanding and acceptance of social protection and the process of drafting and enactment of the law; how success was achieved; and whether the approaches employed by SCI and AAH contributed to the success. Respondents gave consent to being identified only by the titles of the positions they held at the time of the study, upon request by the interviewers. The data was analysed by employing thematic analysis. However, because of the political, cultural, and power dynamics of states, discourse analysis was also used to understand the ways language was used to achieve specific effects on the legislative process.
Policy interest in and understanding of the concept of social protection, or social assistance programmes and legal frameworks, were thin in both states, despite the limited policy traction at the federal level. However, legal frameworks for social insurance programmes exist in the states because labour issues are on the exclusive list of the Nigerian Constitution, and states have limited control over such frameworks. Nigeria’s Constitution provides for a federation composed of three tiers of government (federal, state, and local) with some degree of autonomy. According to the Constitution, the main public sector responsibilities are split across these government levels and require the participation of all three in the delivery of core public services (education, health, and social welfare). The Constitution also guarantees broad powers to the states in policymaking and expenditure allocation policy (Frienkman 2007). Hence, states have considerable autonomy to legislate on some issues deemed important to their development priorities.
In Jigawa and Zamfara states, Zakat and Sadaqah (two forms of Islamic charitable giving as provided for in the Qur’an) were informally available to the poor and needy following adoption of Sharia in the 2000s by 12 Muslim-dominated states in northern Nigeria. However, these states have now begun to maintain some level of state control. This practice does not extend to northern states with majority Christian populations, or southern states. On some occasions, ad hoc or emergency assistance programmes (Holmes et al. 2012) were initiated in response to sporadic covariate shocks (i.e. floods, fire, accidents, and violent conflicts).
The demonstration effect induced by the CDGP, however, spurred policy interest in social protection. The impact of demonstration effects has been observed to be the influential and fundamental pathway in the diffusion of social pension across neighbouring Southern African countries (Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, and Swaziland) (Lavers and Hickey 2021); while the ESPID phase saw SCI and AAH using the evidence generated during the CDGP to provide stakeholders in the states with knowledge and information that enabled an understanding of social protection, including advocating for legal frameworks. This followed a pattern of leveraging on the relationship built with the stakeholders in the states during the CDGP. It was accompanied by a clear recognition and understanding among stakeholders of the poverty and vulnerability problem, as well as the need and commitment to address the problem, rather than an imposition of norms and values by SCI and AAH.
The drafting of the social protection law, by committees composed of government officials and civil society organisation (CSO) members, was viewed as highly complex for two main reasons. Firstly, because of the interests, debates, and contentions generated by the concept of social protection, and efforts not to contravene Sharia law. Secondly, because of the highly unequal power relations between the states, citizens, and traditional and religious leaders. Contentions were centred on the right to social protection for all residents, and finance and states’ responsibility for social protection provision.
However, intensive targeted advocacy, sensitisation, stakeholder engagements, capacity building, employment of technical savvy, and evidence sharing by SCI and AAH minimised contentions and the influence of politics. So there was little resistance and a clear understanding that policies alone would not guarantee institutionalisation, expansion, and sustainability of social protection in the states. According to the Vice-President of the Jigawa Chapter of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD), ‘A policy will just guide you, but the law gives legality, it gives power to the citizens’.5 The process took three months in Jigawa State and eight months in Zamfara, a remarkable feat considering the interest and contentious issues raised.
Two factors stood out in the law-making process: the advocacy, support, and commitment of FCDO, SCI, and AAH; and the commitment of the state governments to poverty and vulnerability reduction, and ensuring the dividends of democracy, including taking ownership of the final product. State stakeholders took the leadership, with SCI and AAH following their lead but providing the much-needed technical, advisory, and financial support and capacity building: a fairly standard pathway followed by international development partners in advocating for social protection adoption and institutionalisation. As one interviewee explained, ‘They allow us to settle our things. They were just there as facilitators, bringing the technical and advisory interventions to drive the process. I think there was not much interference and compelling’.6
The advocacy of SCI and AAH acquired meaningful support from all stakeholders following invitations to CSOs as observers to technical workshops and trainings for government officials. There were also demonstrations of nutritious food preparation organised for local women, and CSOs later participated in monitoring CDGP implementation. This included the facilitation of overseas capacity-building programmes and study tours between 2013 and 2018 (to South Africa, Kenya, and Thailand), which afforded various stakeholders learning opportunities, practical examples, and interaction with practitioners.
This prompted increased CSO involvement in advocating for social protection institutionalisation in Jigawa and Zamfara states. With financial and advisory support and capacity building (technical workshops, role-plays and stimulations, leadership skills and collective mobilisation, advocacy strategies and messaging) from SCI and AAH, CSOs intensified simultaneous sensitisation and engagements with government officials, local communities, traditional rulers, and religious leaders (i.e. the Council of Ulamaa7). CSOs mobilised community-based youth and women’s groups to support advocacy efforts, utilising radio and television programmes (documentaries and short interviews) with phone-in segments in local languages to clarify and encourage requests for information. As well as this, a WhatsApp platform was created for constant communication and interaction. This interviewee elaborated: ‘A lot of advocacy and sensitisation was undertaken. This led to the involvement of stakeholders and helped in having maximum cooperation from the policymakers, legislators, and civil society organisations’.8
Despite the different interests and goals of the stakeholders, SCI and AAH were able to convene and galvanise them to collaborate and concentrate on the social protection bill: ‘Some CSOs and government officials were working towards different goals, but CDGP and ESPID brought a platform for collaboration’.9 Advocacy, enlightenment, and widespread dissemination of information led stakeholders to see social protection not as a palliative short-term intervention or charity but as a deliberate systematic approach to addressing poverty and vulnerability. The view was that this needed to be provided by the government and shielded against policy instability, including limiting its use for political capital by political elites: ‘From the sensitisation process, we learnt that whatever goal we set to achieve economically and politically, social protection should be a part of the process of achieving such goals’.10
Occasionally employing purposive differential targeting of stakeholders, based on their perceived power over the public policy process, was a characteristic of advocacy, stakeholder engagements, and sensitisation carried out by SCI, AAH, and CSOs. This power was most visible regarding state–society relations and Sharia. Specifically, it was to ensure that the most powerful elements of governance and order (government officials, the Council of Ulamaa, and traditional rulers) supported a legal framework without push-backs. The process entailed,
approaching each stakeholder group in their own comfort zone and making them fully aware of what really was the content of the bill, thereby acknowledging their powers. This helped in reducing resistance due to differences in power relations; consequently, engagement was as wide as possible to prevent push-backs.11
Stakeholder engagement was also not the same all through the process. Engagement was intense in the early stages of the committee’s drafting of the legal frameworks and less intense in the latter stages. The drafting committee included government officials and CSOs, with technical, advisory, and capacity-building support from ESPID project staff and an ESPID consultant. There were intermittent shifts between formal and informal engagements because of underlying forms of politics and power relations that shape institutions and become manifest in the development of policy (Kelsall 2018; Khan 2018).
Informal engagements were interactions, knowledge and information sharing, and persuasions underpinned by convivial social relations and reciprocity that occurred outside the confines of officialdom, such as home visits for dinner, observing prayers at mosques, breaking Ramadan fast in each other’s houses, attending social events (e.g. weddings), and having conversations with close relatives and imams of stakeholders. Formal engagement (meetings, workshops, trainings) was marked by power, authority, and politics and happened within official space and time. Informal engagements were reported as having a greater impact on enactment of the law and the motivation was attributed to the political, religious, and cultural context, as well as power relations. But slight variations existed between the states, with Zamfara reporting a higher use of informal engagements.
The active participation of the Council of Ulamaa, traditional leaders, and groups at the local level (i.e. the Jigawa State Council of Chiefs and Emirate Councils), youth and women’s groups, and persons with disabilities associations, who otherwise would not have been involved in the process due to the dynamics of routine law-making processes, was encouraged by SCI and AAH. Participation here refers to actual participation in debates, dialogues, and discussion, not just consultation.
However, respondents noted that participation alone was not enough to guarantee positive results; instead, it was important to take into account the interests of the whole range of stakeholders who can influence or be influenced (Chambers 1997). This induced feelings of acceptance, inclusion, shared norms and values, and a sense of belonging that helped build trust in the process. CSOs were provided technical assistance, knowledge, and capacity building to map the stakeholders and their influence; and articulate advocacy talking points, motivation, explanations on contentious issues, and the benefits of legal frameworks. For government officials, knowledge and information were shared that enabled officials to appreciate the importance of accountability and transparency in the law-making process, the interlinkages between social protection and other sectors (multisectoral approach), the role and benefit of social protection legislation, and the need for inclusion and participation of diverse stakeholders.
Stakeholder engagement experienced further enhancement by the smoothing of the process through SCI and AAH financing of meetings, technical workshops, technical working group (TWG) meetings, and public hearings,
since the state had very little or no resources to commit due to dwindling revenue and other competing development priorities.12
Without this support, the process was likely to have stalled exceeding the time frame consensually agreed for enactment of the law.13
There were also robust efforts made by SCI and AAH and some government champions for all stakeholders to see the law-making process as a process of partners working together towards a common goal.
Despite the law-making process experiencing few obstacles, time and accessibility were two major constraints for senior government officials:
High-level advocacy has a lot of challenges because of the time available to access those people in certain public offices – meeting the local government chairman is easier than seeing a commissioner, and a commissioner is easier to meet than the governor; so the high-level meetings and advocacy came with a lot of challenges because of time and accessibility. The implication was that constant engagement with the process and government stakeholders was required.14
In Zamfara, there was some hold-up from the State Assembly over the need for a social protection law, and what such a law intended to achieve. SCI and AAH responded by working with CSO coalitions to organise a peer-learning exchange between Jigawa and Zamfara State Assemblies and the Jigawa State Rehabilitation Board (JSRB) to share experience and lessons. This was undertaken based on the assumption that both states shared many similarities, and that Zamfara stakeholders could learn something from those of Jigawa, and vice versa. Within six weeks of this exchange, the Assembly passed the law and the governor assented to it.
There was very sparse knowledge, capacity, understanding, and experience of social assistance programmes in Jigawa and Zamfara states as there were hardly any opportunities to engage in capacity building since this was not readily available. ‘While we had experienced several socioeconomic interventions, experience with the CDGP specifically brought us into close contact with social protection, particularly the visible impacts that was witnessed’.15 Also, these states had never designed, developed, and implemented any social assistance programmes.
Deliberate and conscious efforts at capacity building of targeted stakeholders was the basis of the ability of government officials, lawmakers, and CSOs to undertake the drafting and development of social protection legal frameworks: ‘Improving the capacity of stakeholders was the most outstanding impact made by CDGP and now ESPID’.16 He explained that the capacity-building process involved technical workshops organised around structure, content, and implications of legal frameworks for social protection; and evidence, knowledge, and information sharing. However, he pointed out that there was still a dearth of technical and operations capacities: ‘It was during CDGP that the capacity-building process began… it provided knowledge and understanding of social protection and social assistance, including facilitating involvement of key stakeholders to focus on a social protection policy’.17
Purposefully targeting, selecting, and sponsoring a number of key government officials and CSOs to attend programmes outside the country (organised by the Economic and Policy Research Institute (EPRI) in South Africa, Development Pathways, and others in-country) was a key strategy employed by SCI and AAH. The aim was to develop and nurture a category of ‘change agents’ or policy entrepreneurs, also known as ‘social protection champions’, then placing them at the centre of the project’s activities. With the understanding that systemic change is an inherently political process, to be successful, it must be responsive to local challenges and priorities and include local inputs. This enabled SCI and AAH to create a relatively coherent transnational policy coalition, comprising international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), and political and bureaucratic figures to support social protection institutionalisation (Lavers and Hickey 2021). The coalition was instrumental in moderating power relations in the states by shifting approaches to fit elite concerns, especially with regard to political capital.
Under ESPID, capacity building was improved on by not only focusing on reducing technical and knowledge gaps and educating on concepts and frameworks, but also mainstreaming the development of skills linked to good governance and administration (e.g. sound record keeping). This enabled navigation of the challenges and changes that emerged in the law-making process:
They built our capacity to keep records so we could check our progress. Has this been done or not? We will say okay, what is our action plan? And we had to follow that action plan when we come to the next meeting. We look at what has been achieved and what we haven’t achieved. So it helped a lot.18
Furthermore, he explained that the capacity building
reduced some of the challenges in the law-making process, because we were enlightened on what is expected of us and what are the benefits of doing what was expected of us and the general public, so that is why we were able to tackle the challenges that came up.
Evidence generated from the CDGP pilot via monitoring and an impact evaluation, and shared with the government and other stakeholders, motivated and encouraged work on a law. In Jigawa State, the CDGP model was adopted for its Maternal and Child Cash Transfer programme and scaled up to more poor and vulnerable households. While CDGP generated evidence, ESPID focused on dissemination, clarifying contentious issues, leveraging on relationships with stakeholders and CSOs, and using local languages and role-plays to communicate the evidence through town hall meetings in communities. These meetings were a free-flowing information architecture for awareness creation, evidence dissemination, information sharing, and eliciting the information, opinions, and concerns of local communities that fed into discussions around the law. Social protection champions served as co-facilitators to ensure ownership and responsibility.
Participants’ reflections revealed that knowledge brokering was very influential in the process, often involving direct brokering by SCI and AAH and indirect brokering through the TWG and State Steering Committees. Knowledge brokering assisted in changing beliefs, deeply held preconceptions, attitudes, cultural patterns, and development of strategies for influencing the process. For example, it was not clear to many why government should distribute cash to people when there was no emergency, and which was not a loan to be repaid. Secondly, cash transfer was seen as appreciation for votes during election time.
These preconceptions transformed into understandings that poor and vulnerable households were not necessarily lazy but trapped in poverty because they had no support to work their way out; government could give cash to poor and vulnerable people without them having to repay it; social protection was not a gift or privilege; rather, it is a right that citizens are entitled to demand for; and it is also possible to make this justiciable. ‘These shifts led to the law clearly stating that social protection was a right of all residents and deliberately inserted into the law because of the learnings they gathered’.19
The evidence of malnutrition and under-weight reduction following access to ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) and nutritious food using cash transfers from the CDGP according to stakeholders was visible to all. These convinced and galvanised local communities to support social protection:
The fact that there was ‘visible evidence’ from the CDGP contributed to the process because it was something practical and physical that you can see, people are benefiting from it. So when you have anything that you want to enlighten rural areas about, it is not for the elite or for the elegant person to just explain. This visible result or impact seen in the lives of beneficiaries spurred great interest in social protection and efforts to pass the bill into law.20
This study describes a successful external intervention (Devereux 2020) in contexts characterised by high levels of poverty, vulnerability, widespread social exclusion, limited CSO and citizen participation, domestic politics, local powerful interests beyond government, and unequal vertical (state vs society) and horizontal power relations (religious leaders vs society), where political elites favour piecemeal, ad hoc, and non-systematic responses to the welfare of citizens. External actors used evidence generated from an FCDO-initiated pilot which shaped policy interest, understanding, acceptance, and institutionalisation of social protection. Despite initial resistance from internal actors (government officials and policymakers), stakeholders were eventually persuaded through a combination of advocacy, capacity building, and evidence-sharing strategies to institutionalise social protection. The success recorded was underpinned by a cohesive relationship between SCI, AAH, and diverse stakeholders that propelled change that would continue into the future.
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Copyright © 2024 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2024.119
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited, any modifications or adaptations are indicated, and the work is not used for commercial purposes.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 55 No. 2 October 2024 ‘Reimagining Social Protection’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.