Nigeria



Nigeria

Introduction

The country selected for the study is Nigeria, which is officially called the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It is a federal constitutional nation having 36 States. The state of Abuja is the capital. It is situated in West Africa. It shares borders with Niger in the north, in the west with Republic of Benin, in the east with Cameroon and Chad. The River Niger is running through the country. The name Nigeria was derived from it (www.cia.gov).

Regardless of the strong economic growth, 54% of the population of Nigeria still continues to live in poverty. For the past few years, the government and its partners are trying to build up social protection instruments as a system to deal with these high rates of poverty and susceptibility within the country. They are trying to sustain progress both the economically and socially. Social protection is now rising as a policy objective. An eye opener is the fact that the poverty rate over the past 20 years has doubled. About 65% of the state wealth is owned by 20% of the population (Zanker & Holmes, 2012).

Discussion

Social Protection

Social protection is a series of interventions which intend to deal with poverty, risk and vulnerability. These interventions may be done by the state, private sector, the non-governmental agencies, or by community initiatives or informal individuals (Zanker & Holmes, 2012). Social protection measure can be protective i.e. A measure defending households' consumption and income, which includes social assistance programs like in-kind transfers, cash transfers and fee waivers to maintain access to fundamental and social services (Holmes et.al, 2012). The vision (Holmes et.al, 2012) is to, “Institutionalize universal social protection for all Nigerians to motivate workers in the public and private sector to increase productivity and free them of domestic worries. The goal is to increase productivity and ...