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SOCIAL PROTECTION PROGRAMS AND MULTIDIMENSIONALPOVERTY ALLEVIATION IN PLATEAU STATE.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the study
One of the most complicated and intractable developmental challenges on the African continent is poverty in Nigeria. The 2022 Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey (Nov 2021-Feb 2022) published in November of 2022 says that 63 per cent of the Nigerian population live in multidimensional poverty and that the National MPI is 0.257, meaning that the poor people are deprived of more than a quarter of the weighted indic As the survey estimates are done at the senatorial district level, sampling more than 56,000 households in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, only the regional differences in the spatial distribution of poverty are evident, with the states located in the North Central, North West, and North East geopolitical zones reporting a direly higher incidence of multidimensional poverty, as compared to those in the South
Plateau State, in the centre of North Central geopolitical zone of Nigeria, is a good example of the multifaceted cross-intersection of structural poverty in Nigeria, ethno-religious strife, vulnerability to climate and governance issues that defines multidimensional deprivation in the middle belt of Nigeria. A driver of internal displacement that has permeated North Central region and contributed to increased deprivation along a health, education, and living standards axis of the Multidimensional Poverty Index has been a chronic history of inter-communal violence between farming and herding communities recorded in the IOM Nigeria Crisis Response Plans of both 2023 and 2024 and has affected livelihoods, agricultural assets, and livelihoods ( These structural vulnerabilities combined with other macroeconomic strains in Nigeria such as a 31.7 per cent inflation rate in February 2024, the highest rate in 24 years has worsened the welfare of households and underscored the need to adopt strong, specific social protection measures (Akinyetun & Osariyekenwem, 2021; IntechOpen, 2024).
The concept of social protection, which can be seen as the system of public and private actions aimed at reducing poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion by transferring income, assets, and capabilities to households and people who are in a state of deprivation, is becoming recognised as an important tool of poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2022; Lamidi and Igbokwe, 2021). Social protection architecture in Nigeria includes both a variety of federal programmes such as the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP), Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), the N-Power graduate employment scheme, and the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme as part of the National Social Safety Net Project as well as state-specific initiatives that differ significantly in design and approach, Despite the amount of resources spent on such programmes, Nigeria remains one of the lowest-covered nations in social protection with all kinds of protection programmes securing 4.4 per cent of the population as of 2015, according to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG, 2023).
The introduction of the multidimensional measurement of poverty based on the multidimensional lens has far reaching implications on development and appraisal of social protection programmes. The Nigeria MPI (2022) is designed with four dimensions health, education, living standards, and work and shocks and ten indicators, explaining the insight which is based on the Capability Approach of Amartya Sen and is operationalised using the Alkire-Foster methodology that poverty is not primarily a lack of monetary income but a deprivation of human capabilities (OPHI, 2024; UNDP, Such a framework requires that the social protection interventions can not be judged according to the contribution to household consumption; or income transfers, but rather according to what they contribute to the multiple dimension of capability where poor households simultaneously feel deprived. The living conditions where multidimensional deprivation is aggravated by conflict-related vulnerabilities, such as in Plateau State, the response of social protection design to multidimensional deprivation diagnostics is particularly pressing.
The rationale behind this study is thus based on the need to critically investigate the role of social protection programmes at both federal and state levels in helping to ameliorate multidimensional poverty in Plateau State and the programmatic and institutional factors that will increase or limit their effectiveness in this highly complex socio-economic environment.
1.2. Statement of the Problem
Though federal and state spending on social protection programmes has significantly increased in Nigeria, the changing rate of high multidimensional poverty incidence at 33 per cent of the population as multidimensionalally poor and an extra 16.6 per cent at risk of experiencing multidimensional poverty as of 2022, compared with the number of 73.7 million multidimensionally poor suggests that the programmes are fundament This disconnection is particularly extreme in states like Plateau whereby conflict-related displacement, agricultural upheaval, and governance issues ratify difficulties in delivering the programmes at the structural societal levels (IOM, 2023).
The available literature on social protection in Nigeria indicates that there are a number of issues which are problematic. To begin with, the literature continues to report high rates of exclusion errors in programmes, and households facing concurrent deprivations in health, education, and living standards are often not reached in programmes due to targeting failures, ineffective identification systems to reach the target beneficiaries, and implementation imbalances (Lamidi and Igbokwe, 2021; NESG, 2023). Second, most impact assessments of Nigerian social protection programmes are based on monetary measures of poverty, which do not capture the impacts of programmes on non-income aspects of poverty such as nutrition, child mortality, education levels, access to clean water, and accumulation of household assets which are the focus of the multidimensional poverty framework (Akoji and Abaji, 2025; World Bank, 2022 Third, the evidence base that state policy makers of programme performance can use in developing contextually-fit interventions is sparse because there are few state-specific studies that situate programme performance within the unique socio-economic and conflict ecology of Plateau State.
This paper answers these gaps by presenting a systematic measure of the success of social protection programmes in reducing multidimensional poverty in Plateau State as the Alkire-Foster MPI framework is used as the major analytical tool.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The broad objective of this study is to examine the relationship between social protection programmes and multidimensional poverty alleviation in Plateau State, Nigeria. The specific objectives are:
- To assess the nature, coverage, and implementation effectiveness of social protection programmes operating in Plateau State, Nigeria;
- To examine the dimensions and indicators of multidimensional poverty most prevalent among beneficiary and non-beneficiary households in Plateau State;
iii. To evaluate the impact of social protection programme participation on multidimensional poverty outcomes including deprivations in health, education, living standards, and work among households in Plateau State;
- To identify the institutional, governance, and contextual factors that moderate the effectiveness of social protection programmes in reducing multidimensional poverty in Plateau State; and
- To provide evidence-based policy recommendations for enhancing the contribution of social protection programmes to multidimensional poverty alleviation in Plateau State.
1.4 Research Questions
- What is the nature, coverage, and implementation effectiveness of social protection programmes in Plateau State, Nigeria?
- What are the key dimensions and indicators of multidimensional poverty most prevalent among households in Plateau State?
iii. What is the impact of social protection programme participation on multidimensional poverty outcomes among households in Plateau State?
- What institutional, governance, and contextual factors moderate the effectiveness of social protection programmes in reducing multidimensional poverty in Plateau State?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
H01: Social protection programme participation has no significant effect on the multidimensional poverty index score of beneficiary households in Plateau State.
H02: Social protection programme participation has no significant effect on health-related deprivations among beneficiary households in Plateau State.
H03: Social protection programme participation has no significant effect on educational and living standards deprivations among beneficiary households in Plateau State.
This study makes several contributions. Theoretically, it enriches the literature on social protection-poverty nexus in conflict-affected sub-national contexts by applying the Alkire-Foster multidimensional poverty framework as opposed to conventional monetary poverty metrics to the evaluation of programme outcomes. This approach more comprehensively captures the multi-domain deprivations that social protection programmes are expected to address. Empirically, the study generates original primary data on programme coverage, beneficiary experiences, and poverty outcomes in Plateau State, filling a significant gap in the state-specific social protection literature in Nigeria’s North Central region. From a policy standpoint, the findings are directly relevant to the Plateau State Government, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and development partners including the World Bank, UNICEF, and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), all of whom are actively engaged in the design and financing of social protection systems in Nigeria.
1.7 Scope of the Study
This study covers social protection programmes operating in Plateau State, including federal programmes (HGSFP, N-Power, CCT/NASSP, and GEEP) and state-level initiatives, with a temporal scope spanning 2019 to 2024. The geographic focus encompasses both urban and rural local government areas in the three senatorial districts of Plateau State, recognising the substantial intra-state variation in poverty depth, conflict exposure, and programme reach. The study employs household survey data, key informant interviews, and secondary programme administrative data to construct a comprehensive assessment of multidimensional poverty dynamics and programme effectiveness in the state.
1.8 Limitations of the Study
The principal limitation of this study relates to the challenges of conducting primary data collection in conflict-affected communities within Plateau State, where insecurity may restrict survey coverage and introduce sample selection biases. To mitigate this, the study employs cluster-stratified sampling with built-in substitution protocols for inaccessible communities and supplements primary data with secondary MPI estimates from OPHI and NBS. Additionally, attribution of observed poverty changes to specific programme interventions is complicated by the simultaneous operation of multiple programmes and external confounding factors including conflict shocks and macroeconomic deterioration; the study addresses this through difference-in-differences and propensity score matching estimators to the extent that data permit.
1.9 Operational Definition of Terms
Social Protection: Public and private mechanisms including social insurance, social assistance, labour market interventions, and social care services designed to prevent, mitigate, and enable recovery from poverty and vulnerability across the life cycle.
Multidimensional Poverty: A condition of simultaneous deprivation across multiple dimensions of human well-being including health, education, living standards, and work as measured by the Alkire-Foster counting approach applied in the global and national Multidimensional Poverty Index.
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): A composite index developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the UNDP that captures the incidence and intensity of simultaneous deprivations across multiple indicators of human development.
Beneficiary Household: A household that is registered and actively receiving benefits whether in the form of cash transfers, food supplements, employment placements, or credit facilities under one or more social protection programmes operating in Plateau State.
Programme Effectiveness: The degree to which a social protection programme achieves its intended outcomes in reducing the incidence, intensity, and severity of multidimensional poverty among targeted beneficiaries, relative to a counterfactual scenario of non-participation.
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