Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has declared that the Federal Government’s provision of cash transfers, grants and other social protection interventions to poor and vulnerable Nigerians is a legal obligation, not an act of charity, insisting the Federal Government could face legal action if it fails to fund poverty reduction programmes in the 2026 fiscal year as the law demands.

Falana, who chairs the Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond, said the National Social Investment Programme Agency (Establishment) Act, 2023 makes it mandatory for the Federal Government to implement such programmes for citizens. In a statement issued on Sunday, the senior lawyer said recent public conversation around poverty alleviation, sparked by comments credited to Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, should centre on government’s statutory responsibility to tackle poverty rather than on individual self-help efforts alone.

He explained that the NSIPA Act established the National Social Investment Programme Agency to coordinate interventions for vulnerable citizens, unemployed youths and small business owners through four flagship programmes: the N-Power scheme for youth employment and skills acquisition, the Conditional Cash Transfer scheme for the poorest households, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme comprising TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni, and the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme. According to him, the law was designed to give effect to Section 16 of the Constitution, which directs the Nigerian state to control the national economy to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen.

Citing official figures, Falana noted that the National Bureau of Statistics estimates about 133 million Nigerians as multidimensionally poor, while PwC Nigeria projects that the figure could rise to 141 million people, representing roughly 62 per cent of the country’s population. “Giving grants to poor and vulnerable people in society is no longer borne out of political interests. It has become the government’s legal obligation to citizens, not acts of charity or generosity,” he said, while urging the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction to regularly brief Nigerians on the implementation of poverty reduction programmes pending the passage of the budget.

His remarks come just days after the First Lady urged Nigerians not to lose hope despite prevailing economic hardship, suggesting that small-scale ventures such as selling akara, roasting corn and producing kulikuli require little capital and could provide a source of livelihood for many.

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