KEY POINTS
• NBS, ILO and EU call for better coordination of social protection data to strengthen policy planning and service delivery.
• NBS is working with partners to harmonise data and develop a Social Protection Management Information System.
• Four states, Abia, Benue, Oyo and Sokoto, are participating in the ILO supported SUSE programme.
• NBS proposes a ward level social protection data layer to provide more detailed information for development planning.
MAIN STORY
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), International Labour Organisation (ILO) and European Union (EU) have called for stronger coordination of social protection data to support better policy planning and delivery of interventions in Nigeria.
The stakeholders made the call on Tuesday in Abuja at the National Social Protection Statistics Dialogue and Data Collection Engagement organised by the ILO in collaboration with NBS, EU and UNICEF.
Mr Semiu Adeniran, Statistician General of the Federation, said the engagement was coming at a time when Nigeria’s social protection system was undergoing significant changes.
He said government was taking steps to strengthen national ownership, coordination, financing and delivery of social protection and poverty reduction programmes.
According to Adeniran, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction is also pursuing a more integrated approach through its “One Humanitarian, One Poverty Response System”, aimed at reducing fragmentation and creating a more coordinated national social protection architecture.
He said the NBS had a responsibility to ensure that such reforms and programmes were supported by reliable, timely, comparable and disaggregated statistics.
“Our role at NBS is to help ensure that as Nigeria strengthens its social protection architecture, we also strengthen the evidence architecture.
“This will enable government to know what is working, who is being reached, where the gaps are and how the system is performing over time,” he said.
Adeniran said collaboration with the ILO and EU had strengthened NBS technical capacity, supported efforts to harmonise social protection data and improved engagement with institutions responsible for implementing social protection programmes.
He added that work was ongoing to establish a Social Protection Management Information System (SPMIS), which would bring together data currently held by different institutions.
The system, he said, would make the information available in a coordinated and harmonised form for statistical production at both national and sub national levels.
Adeniran identified Abia, Benue, Oyo and Sokoto as the four states participating in the ILO supported SUSE programme.
He said Nigeria needed to move away from treating social protection statistics as occasional reporting and instead establish sustainable systems, standards, institutional arrangements and data flows for regular statistical production.
The Statistician General said the dialogue should also provide a clearer picture of existing data gaps, the institutions holding relevant information and the practical measures required to address those gaps.
He called for improved coordination of social protection data at the sub national level, particularly at the ward level.
Adeniran said the NBS’s recent ward demarcation exercise had provided a statistical foundation for obtaining more detailed information on development conditions.
“If development planning is increasingly taking place at the ward level, our social protection statistics must also start to tell us what is happening at the ward level,” he said.
He, however, said this would not require the creation of a new large scale survey for every social protection programme in every ward.
Instead, he said NBS would explore developing a ward level social protection data layer by combining information from existing government systems with targeted statistical data collection.
Dr Vanessa Phala, Country Director of the ILO, described the engagement as a milestone in efforts to build reliable and resilient data systems for evidence based social protection interventions.
Phala said policy decisions could not be effectively based on assumptions and stressed the importance of reliable statistics in designing interventions and tracking their progress.
She also described social protection as a fundamental human right and a pillar of decent work and social justice.
Mr Ben Mathew, Head of Section, Human Development, represented by Chioma Osuji, said the EU regarded the engagement as part of an ongoing process rather than a one off exercise.
Mathew commended the ILO and NBS for organising the dialogue at a time when stronger social protection systems were becoming increasingly important to inclusive development, social cohesion and resilience.
He said effective social protection depended not only on policy commitment but also on strong institutions and credible data.
THE ISSUES
- Fragmented social protection data can make it difficult to establish who is receiving support, where gaps remain and how interventions are performing over time. The proposed harmonisation of information is intended to address this challenge.
- The push for more disaggregated data reflects the need to understand social protection conditions below the national level. Ward level information could give policymakers a more detailed picture of development and vulnerability in different communities.
- The proposed SPMIS could provide a common structure for information currently held by different institutions, reducing the separation of data and supporting statistical production across national and sub national levels.
- The focus on sustainable data systems also shifts attention from producing statistics for individual reporting exercises to establishing regular processes, standards and institutional arrangements that can support long term policy planning.
WHAT’S BEING SAID
“This will enable government to know what is working, who is being reached, where the gaps are and how the system is performing over time,” – Mr Semiu Adeniran, NBS.
“If development planning is increasingly taking place at the ward level, our social protection statistics must also start to tell us what is happening at the ward level,” – Mr Semiu Adeniran, NBS.
“If we want to reduce poverty and do not know how many people are poor, or the level of their vulnerability, we cannot initiate programmes that will address poverty,” – Mr Ben Mathew, EU.
WHAT’S NEXT
The NBS is expected to continue work on the Social Protection Management Information System and explore a ward level social protection data layer that combines information from government systems with targeted statistical data collection.
BOTTOM LINE
The stakeholders want Nigeria’s expanding social protection architecture to be supported by coordinated, reliable and detailed data that can guide policy decisions and measure whether interventions are reaching the people who need them.
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