Social Welfare: Kano Understudies Lagos Strategy on Data, Development Planning LAGOS — In a bid to overhaul its social safety operations, the Kano State Social Protection Agency has understudied Lagos State’s framework for community data collection, budget integration, and welfare administration. A delegation from Kano, led by the agency’s Director-General, Fatima Abubakar-Abdullahi, held a two-day technical session with officials of the Lagos State Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget at the ministry’s headquarters in Alausa, Ikeja. Much of the conversation in Alausa focused on how the Lagos social register works in practice.
The meeting also looked at how Lagos knows the needs of communities and keeps track of disadvantaged households. The social register provides information that can be used by the government when planning its yearly budget and deciding where assistance may be needed. Before the system was put in place, welfare programmes were handled by different ministries and government agencies. As stated by the officials, this made it challenging to organise the programme successfully. While some communities could receive support from more than one government agency, others were not reached. Permanent Secretary Olayinka Ojo said the ministry took steps to address the problem by creating the Social Protection Coordinating Department. The department has permanent staff assigned to areas including social work, field visits, management of social register records, communication, procurement and accounts.
The department was designed as a permanent structure rather than another temporary committee. It has full-time staff responsible for different areas, including social work, door-to-door field activities, management of social register data, public communication, procurement, and financial administration. Ojo said putting these responsibilities under one department has made it easier for the different government agencies to work together. It has also made it easier to understand the needs of communities, keep better records of those requiring assistance, and coordinate interventions so that government support can be directed toward the people who need it most. ” It helps us to plan for the state in a disaggregated manner so that we leave no one behind,” Ojo said, adding that relying on broad regional statistics often masks localised poverty across communities. Information collected from the communities gives government officials a clearer picture of the problems residents are dealing with.
It can show, for example, whether an area needs a health centre, better access to clean water or financial assistance. Lagos also uses information from communities when putting together its annual budget. Instead of relying only on information from government offices, the state works with Community Development Committees and other neighbourhood groups to hear directly from residents about the issues affecting them. Consultations across local government areas for the 2027 budget cycle just wrapped up. These grassroots groups give officials a direct line to the streets.
Through them, the state updates its welfare registers, double-checks recipient lists, and hears directly from residents on whether programmes like school feeding or medical subsidies are actually delivering. The Permanent Secretary further stressed that while the Lagos State Development Plan sets long-term targets for economic growth and human capital, policy execution depends on continuous capacity building for civil servants and collaboration with private sector actors and civil society groups. “We are very audacious about our plan,” Ojo told the visiting team.
She explained that strengthening the ministry’s internal systems and staff capacity would be important to keeping the welfare programmes running effectively over the long term. On her part, the Director-General of the Kano agency, Abubakar-Abdullahi, explained that Kano sought practical operational guidance because its social protection agency, established last year, was still setting up its administrative and field frameworks. “We came to Lagos to learn, to understand how you put your things in place, because Lagos is Nigeria,” she said. She thanked the Lagos State officials for sharing the procedures and materials used in their work. She said the experience would be useful to Kano as it works on how to collect information from communities and improve the delivery of welfare services across its local government areas.
The Kano delegation also included the agency’s Director of Planning, Dalhatu Danladi, and Director of Public Enlightenment, Rabiu Ibrahim. The team later met with the Lagos social protection unit, where Director Semiu Yusuf led the session. They went through some of the materials used by the unit in its day-to-day work, including forms for field monitoring and registration. The team was particularly interested in how these materials could be modified for use in Kano.
