The Federal Government has launched its $1 billion Renewed Hope Social Protection Programme, aimed at moving vulnerable Nigerians beyond temporary relief towards sustainable economic empowerment and self-reliance.
The programme was unveiled on Wednesday by First Lady Oluremi Tinubu at the Presidential Banquet Hall, State House, Abuja.
The initiative includes the Household Prosperity and Empowerment Social Protection Project (HOPE-SP), designed to strengthen the identification and support of vulnerable households while providing immediate assistance and pathways to economic recovery.
Speaking at the launch, Mrs Tinubu described the HOPE-SP project as an important step towards improving the way government identifies and responds to vulnerable households.
“The Household Prosperity and Economic Social Protection Project is an important step towards strengthening how to identify and respond to vulnerable households facing various challenges by listening to their specific needs before taking action.”
She said the programme was designed to provide immediate stabilisation assistance while placing beneficiaries on a pathway to recovery, empowerment and self-reliance.
The First Lady also highlighted the One Humanitarian, One Poverty Response System, which she said would provide a coordinated national response to humanitarian crises, social protection and poverty reduction.
According to her, the system would help prevent duplication of interventions and maintain unified national registries for tracking poor and vulnerable households as they progress from vulnerability to prosperity.
The HOPE-SP initiative targets about 7.6 million vulnerable households across the country, with eligible households expected to receive a one-off digital shock-response cash transfer of ₦40,000.
The Federal Government said beneficiaries would be selected from the National Social Register and validated with their National Identification Numbers (NINs) to strengthen transparency and ensure that assistance reaches genuine beneficiaries.
The government is also working with the National Identity Management Commission to ease NIN registration and improve the verification process.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Bernard Doro, said the programme would adopt a different approach to poverty reduction by deliberately tracking households and measuring their progress towards economic self-reliance.
“We have a system where we want to deliberately track poverty,” Doro said.
He said the programme would strengthen the coordination of humanitarian interventions, social protection and poverty reduction, while placing households at the centre of government support.
The minister also disclosed that the Federal Government had disbursed more than ₦600 billion in cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians over the past three years.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today hours after the launch of the programme on Wednesday, Doro said the intervention had reached slightly more than 10 million households.
“We’ve done over 600 billion in cash transfers to be able to support vulnerable Nigerians within three years. We have reached slightly over 10 million households,” he said.
Meanwhile, Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum said the programme could contribute to addressing some of the underlying causes of insecurity in the country.
Zulum said poverty, illiteracy and social inequality were among the factors contributing to insurgency and crises, stressing that military action alone could not permanently resolve such challenges.
“The kinetic measures alone will never end the insurgency. Addressing the social, economic, and political dimension of the crisis is synchronous to addressing insecurity challenges in Nigeria,” he said.
The Federal Government said the new social protection framework would build on ongoing cash-transfer reforms while creating a more targeted and accountable system for supporting vulnerable households and helping them transition from dependence to sustainable economic participation.
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