Keywords

Introduction

On February 27, 2020, Nigeria reported its first case of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease (Ehanire, 2020), and by the third week of March, the total number of cases had risen to 22 across Nigeria. Healthcare expenditure in Nigeria was low pre-COVID-19. In 2018, the per capita government expenditure on health care was 3.89% of GDP, below the regional average of 5.1% (World Bank, 2018). As of 2019, there were 0.381 physicians per 1000 people (World Bank, 2018), meaning that traditional medicine still plays a significant role in meeting people’s health needs, especially in rural areas (Antail, 2010).

Before the pandemic, the Nigerian economy had been grappling with a weak recovery from the earlier 2014 oil price shock. In 2019, GDP growth hovered around 2.3%. In February 2020, the IMF revised its initial forecasted 2020 GDP growth rate from 2.5% to 2% (Fouda, 2020) to reflect the impact of lower international oil prices and limited fiscal space. A high debt profile further impeded the economic growth trajectory. As of the end of 2019, the total public debt portfolio stood at USD 84 billion (NGN 27.40 trillion). Nigeria's overdependence on crude oil also resulted in a gloomy revenue outlook for the year. To reflect the oil output cut by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in Q1 2020, the Nigerian crude oil production volume was revised from the 2.18 million barrels per day (mbdp) used to create the 2020 budget to 1.9 mbdp (Federal Ministry of Finance Budget & National Planning, 2020). This revision resulted in an estimated budget shortfall of about USD17 billion. Given these constraining factors, coupled with deteriorating terms of trade, the outlook for Nigeria’s economy pre-COVID-19 was fragile (Federal Ministry of Finance Budget & National Planning, 2020).

In addition to its oil dependency, another essential feature of the Nigerian economy is its huge informal sector, which contributes 65% to GDP and, COVID-19, 80% of employment (ILO, 2020). PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that about 96% of all enterprises in the country are categorised as MSMEs, contributing 84% of national employment (PwC, 2020). The informal sector absorbs a disproportionate number of women, young workers, and migrants—all of whom face socio-cultural barriers that often place them in precarious economic conditions.

Inequality of educational opportunities and learning outcomes are also stark, and educational attainment is correlated with poverty incidence. Households headed by individuals with little or no education experience the highest depths of poverty in Nigeria (Ojowu et al., 2007). Despite an increase in school enrolment figures, with 9 out of 10 children enrolled in school (NPC, 2010), there are still 10.5 million children out of school, and more boys than girls are enrolled in school.

While Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, poverty and inequality are pervasive. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS (2019), 40% of the total population lives below the country’s poverty line of USD381.75 (137 430 Naira) per year. Stark disparities exist between the rural and urban areas in Nigeria. In 2019, urban poverty was 18% compared to rural poverty of 52%. Income inequality is also high at a Gini coefficient of 35.1 with a ratio of 32. Eight in rural compared to 31.9 for urban areas.

Lack of access to basic infrastructure and services is a crucial driver of poverty in Nigeria. Access to electricity remains low at 45% (36% rural and 55% urban) and a paltry generating capacity of about 4000 MW (USAID, 2020; World Bank, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c) with a current access rate of 45%. Even when there is access to electricity, electricity in Nigeria is erratic, and vulnerable households find it difficult to pay electric bills. Additionally, due to the exchange rate crises in Nigeria, it has become expensive to afford generators. For those households who own generators, fuel prices have increased significantly over the years, leading to reduced usage.

Methodology

This research draws on both primary and secondary research carried out between August and November 2020. The literature review provides the backdrop of the evolving socio-economic context in the following chapters. We culled data from the National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) 2020 (World Bank, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c) conducted jointly by the NBS and the World Bank to monitor, in real-time, the socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis on households and individuals in Nigeria. A nationally representative sample of 1950 households was drawn from the selected households interviewed in the 2018/2019 General Household Survey-Panel (GHS-Panel). This survey provided detailed background information that we leveraged to assess the differential impacts of the pandemic in the country. The survey has been conducted monthly, beginning in April, with the survey questions revised monthly to accommodate the crises’ evolving nature. For this report, we utilised data from the survey collected over three rounds—April/May, June, and July.

Primary data was collected to provide some depth to understanding the full socio-economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary data collection aimed to understand better the impact of COVID-19 and the containment measures and restrictions implemented by the government and to assess the accessibility and impact of the mitigation measures on micro and small enterprises, the informally employed, and students, particularly the most vulnerable groups. We collected primary data through two methods: surveys/questionnaires and Focus Group Discussions (FGD).

The survey data were from the four states with federally imposed lockdowns—Abuja, Kano, Lagos, and Ogun. The field surveys were administered in rural and urban communities. Participants were interviewed using a structured questionnaire, including both open and closed-ended questions. The questionnaire’s objective was to assess the gender context, social protection coverage, the potential for learning loss, and distance learning coverage deeply. Two separate questionnaires were administered, one channelled toward garnering information on the impact on the informal economy and the other on the basic education sector (primary and secondary schools). Therefore, we discuss the findings in individual sections in the following chapters. For both questionnaires, a purposive sampling technique was employed to select informants, including business owners and workers in the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, and parents, students, and teachers.

A cross-sectional technique was employed, and the interviews were conducted in person, using a Computer Assisted Interview (CAPI) method. For the NLPS survey, majority of the respondents worked in the agriculture sector (51.3% on average in the months of interest), followed distantly by workers involved in buying and selling (18% average) and personal services (15% average). To make up for this agricultural sector bias, the field survey covered a small percentage of agricultural sector workers (7%), focusing more on wholesale retail and trade (buying and selling, 56%). We also purposefully selected respondents who worked in sectors with substantial informal sector representation.

Cumulatively, we conducted four FDGs at two selected sites in Abuja—Mpape and Gishiri, two remote and rural areas in Abuja. The participants were all-women groups drawn from the communities, a cross-section of mothers, informal and micro-enterprises business owners or workers, and schoolteachers or owners.

Policy Responses to COVID-19 Health Crisis: Costs and Impacts

The first recorded case of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) occurred in Lagos State on February 27, 2020, (NCDC, 2020) when the health system was under stress. In June 2020, Nigeria’s capacity for COVID-19 testing was about 2,500 samples daily (Dixit et al., 2020). However, only 50% of this capacity was utilised due to constraints in the availability of testing kits, laboratories, and human resources. As of June 30, 2020, only 0.07% of the Nigerian population had been tested for the virus—138,462 individuals in a population of 200 million. Before the outbreak, Nigeria had only 350 ventilators and 350 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds. However, in April 2020, 100 additional ventilators were acquired. An additional 200 ventilators were donated by the government of the United States of America (Federal Ministry of Health, 2020). Also, ICUs have been provided across various states in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria (devex, n.d.).

To ensure a coordinated emergency response to the virus, in February 2020, a Level 3 Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) was activated by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Before the outbreak, the NCDC had established EOCs in 23 Nigerian states. These centres have continued to serve as the state level's coordination point since the confirmation of the first case. Furthermore, state governments established isolation centres to provide the necessary care and social distance for COVID-19 patients. The NCDC has also deployed rapid response teams across the states in Nigeria and has continued to work with and receive support from the African Centre for Disease Control, the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the West Africa Health Organisation (NCDC, 2020).

Furthermore, the Nigerian government provided grants to all the states in Nigeria and the FCT via the COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Project (CoPREP) to support the fight against the virus through containment and mitigation strategies. CoPREP aimed to improve the capacity for detecting the virus by providing technical expertise, diagnosis, and case management in the 36 states in Nigeria. It also aimed at strengthening response capacity through frontline healthcare workers’ training, among other aims.

The swiftness of the responses perhaps limited the spread of infections in the country. Rapid Response Teams (RRT) were also deployed across the country, with individual states charged with lead contract tracing and other health response activities within their states. On the 9th of March, the Federal Government commissioned a Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, which was supposed to work collaboratively with NCDC to provide crucial and uniform guidelines for dealing with the pandemic at the national level. Immediately, the PTF began issuing policy guidelines to control the virus's spread within the country. The measures include a federally Sanctioned lockdown implemented in the three states most affected states such as Lagos, Ogun, and the Federal Capital Territory, by the end of March, school closures, travel bans, closure of airports, and restrictions on interstate movement and border closures. The government made some exceptions to accommodate essential services to facilitate food movement within states and across the country.

Fallouts of COVID-19 in Nigeria

Several fallouts of the COVID-19 measures are essential to note. The implementation and enforcement of the lockdown policy ultimately proved controversial and fatal in Nigeria. Security operatives, military and paramilitary personnel were drafted to execute the lockdown order in the Federal Capital Territory and several states with state-imposed lockdowns. Despite the increase in inter-agency cooperation between the police and other institutions, the enforcement of Phase 1 of the lockdown amplified existing challenges around human rights abuses and corruption within these institutions and the nation. Between March 30 and April 15, the first two weeks of the lockdown, eight reports of extrajudicial killings were directly related to the enforcement of the lockdown regulations, leading to eighteen deaths (Africanews, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). Stark, when juxtaposed with the fact that the COVID-19 virus had led to only eleven deaths in the country (NHRC, 2020). Various human rights violations were reported during the monitoring period, induced by corruption, misuse/abuse of power, excessive use of force, and non-adherence to national and human rights laws. They include thirty-three instances of torture, degrading, and inhumane treatments, twenty-seven cases of breach of the right to the freedom of movement, unlawful detentions, and arrest, nineteen cases of unauthorised seizures/confiscation of properties, thirteen cases of bribery and extortion (profiteering from the lockdown), and sexual abuse (Odigbo et al., 2020; Obaji, 2020). The security agencies were also accused of profiteering from the lockdown by extorting money from motorists in exchange for passage at established checkpoints (The Guardian, 2020a).

In addition, there was an initial spike in crime and unrest in the affected lockdown states due to lockdown hardships and inmates’ release from correctional facilities across all states (Odita, 2020). Within the first two weeks, 200 people were reportedly arrested on counts of robbing and raping young girls. The increase in local crime rates, especially in residential areas, resulted in impromptu vigilante groups springing up in residential areas as residents tried to secure themselves (Benson, 2020). There was also an increase in other forms of crime during the first month of the lockdown (Asimi, 2020). Intelligence from Interpol headquarters revealed that fraudsters had set up fraudulent websites, e-commerce platforms, and social media accounts claiming they retail COVID-19 medical products.

The incidence of domestic and gender-based violence also escalated. For example, in June 2020, Lagos state government-run Domestic and Gender Violence Response Team said it had been inundated with increased sexual and domestic violence reports since the lockdown began at the end of March (DSVRT, 2020). On average, the team received 13 new calls daily, and by the end of March, had 390 reports. Cumulatively, domestic violence, sexual violence, and physical child abuse cases increased by 60, 30, and 10%, respectively, compared to the months before the lockdown was implemented. Although the lockdown restrictions were relaxed in May, this upsurge persisted through the other phases of the lockdown, as many offices and schools stayed closed until September 2020. Additionally, people’s financial difficulties during and beyond the complete lockdown contributed to the upsurge (Global Biosecurity, 2020).

COVID-19 and Job Losses

The lockdown measures led to the fall in economic activities across all industries and segments of the economy, causing a spike in unemployment rates. As of July 2020, the first three rounds of the NLPS 2020 survey revealed that since mid-March, 11% of the respondents had not engaged in any work, and 39%, 36% and 14% were able to return to work in April/May, June, and July respectively. Similarly, 27.5% of field survey respondents reported that they had experienced unemployment due to COVID-19, with 17% of the total respondents reporting that they were yet to find suitable employment at the time the surveys were conducted. In terms of sectors, 28.8% were in food services 11.6% were in wholesale and retail sectors. The NLPS 2020 survey shows that by June, 45% of Nigerians surveyed had stopped working.

At the household level, labour income losses were ubiquitous. Eighty percent of NLPS respondents reported some level of income loss. The decrease in household income was prominent for households engaged in non-farm activities. For the field survey, 93% of respondents reported an income decrease of at least 50% in current incomes. For informal sector respondents, this reflected 95% compared to 86% of formal sector respondents. All respondents operating in the agricultural, fishing, poultry, food service, construction, and domestic work sectors reported a decline in income. In all other sectors under review, above 90% of respondents reported a loss in individual and household incomes.

The findings from NLPS 2020 and the field survey reveal two things: First the compliance of Nigerians with the government’s policies to curb the spread of the virus and second, for the people who were most affected by the pandemic, recovery has been slow. Although the partial reopening of the economy began in May 2020, the dampening effects of Phase 1 of the lockdown on the livelihoods persisted. According to the NLPS 2020, 56% of people with formal urban jobs had stopped working as of June 2020, compared to 40% of rural workers. Thirty percent of the field survey respondents who identified as employees in the informal sector revealed that they had experienced unemployment due to the lockdown, compared to 20% in the formal sector.

Furthermore, this is particularly dire for family-run businesses whose shutdown affects the members. Recovery was slow as 80% of respondents cited disruptions in supply chains as a significant constraint. Other essential factors to note are an increase in raw material and input costs, as was reported by 45% of survey respondents.

Youth were more vulnerable to job losses, and the most impoverished people were most susceptible to high-income losses. The age bracket of respondents with the highest unemployment due to the COVID-19 was youth between 18 and 25 years old. An overwhelming majority of respondents (90%) reported that their incomes had been severely affected since the lockdown. While all income groups reported a loss, those who fell in the first wealth quintile, less than the minimum wage of USD 78.70 (NGN 30,000), reported the most significant losses, at almost 80%.

Food insecurity issues were exacerbated during lockdown periods, and the effects have persisted. Though the significant lockdowns affected urban areas more than agricultural producing rural areas, restrictions on interstate movement, panic buying, and border closures caused bottlenecks in the food supply, driving up prices. According to NLPS 2020, more than 80% of the surveyed households could not purchase staple food during Phase 1 of the lockdown because of the lack of income. Fifty-one percent of field data respondents reported that their food consumption had substantially compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. Eight percent attributed this to lack of income, while 19% blamed it on food unavailability. The problem was exacerbated by food inflation which rose steadily between March and September. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), food prices increased by 0.52 percentage points between July 2020 and August 2020 (CBN, n.d.). According to NLPS 2020, 85% of households experienced increased prices of staple foods, while 55% dealt with income shocks by consuming less food. All survey respondents had to adjust food consumption as a result.

During the lockdown phases, women were just as likely to lose their jobs and have their incomes affected as men. Most (97.5%) of female field survey respondents compared to males (93%) reported that the lockdown negatively affected their incomes. Similarly, 15% of females, compared with 12%, reported losing their jobs during the lockdown. However, the most significant impact of COVID-19 on women was the increased time spent providing unpaid care work. Even though the economy began to reopen in May 2020, schools remained closed until September 2020, which meant an increase in demand for childcare within homes. Women were disproportionately affected by the increased time spent doing unpaid care work. Many female participants during the FGD reported reducing their work hours or quitting their jobs or businesses to focus on childcare because schools were closed until mid-September. Many (75%) of all field survey respondents acknowledged an increase in the amount of time spent performing non-paid childcare, and the burden for providing care was on a female household member. Similarly, 74% of respondents reported that there was also an increase in the amount of time spent caring for an ill member of the household, and female household members provided 70% of the care. As a result, the recovery for women has been far slower than for men.

Education: Impacts on Access to Learning for Vulnerable Students

According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the shutdown of schools affected about 35.9 million (91%) primary and secondary school students in Nigeria. Out of these, over 91% are primary and secondary school learners (Adelakun, 2020), of which 84% were public school students (Obiakor & Adeniran, 2020). Aside from the missed learning opportunities, the school shutdowns have resulted in a more significant crisis for this group of vulnerable young students. For the most vulnerable young students, formal education provided more than basic educational needs; it provided these groups with daily meals, social protection, and other vital school-provided services.

The NLPS 2020 showed that the COVID-19 pandemic reduced children’s learning opportunities. Over the three months in review, it was revealed that 38% of pre-pandemic in-school children did not engage in any educational activity for the last seven days preceding the survey. Moreover, educational activities were lower for poorer households (35%) than their wealthier counterparts (65%). Similarly, urban-based children reported more activities (70%) than their rural counterparts (48%).

The most significant barrier to learning was the lack of access to appropriate tools and infrastructure, which was the case for 84% of all students surveyed. Unavailability of resources and digital infrastructure (60%) and support/help (25%) constituted the main constraints to learning. Additionally, over 20% of the parents reported that their children either did not study during the school closures or did not study for up to an hour per day because the children had to be engaged in other income-generating activities to support their families. Lack of access to adequate nutrition also affected learning.

Mitigation Measures

One of the most immediate and predominant impacts of the COVID-19 policies in Nigeria was its impact on economic outcomes and society. However, the impacts continue to persist beyond the lockdown. Unfortunately, the first to bear the effect were vulnerable individuals, including students, women, micro and small enterprises, and daily wage earners operating in the formal and informal sectors. For these groups, the combined effects of the severity of the pandemic and the uncertainty of everyday normalcy deepened inequality and further entrenched poverty. To mitigate some of the socio-economic impacts, the Federal Government introduced a range of short-term interventions to absorb some of the shocks experienced by different social groups. Several ministries coordinated these efforts at the national level, in partnerships with state governments nationwide.

The income and livelihood support programmes include conditional cash transfer, social protection, in-kind support, a CBN USD 129.95 million (NGN50billion) credit facility and tax support for MSMEs. In terms of income support, on April 1st, the government announced a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme of 51.58 USD (NGN 20,000) monthly for four months beginning in April and targeted the poorest and most vulnerable households (Obiakor, 2020). The CCT was an extension of an existing CCT program, introduced in 2016 as part of the President's Social Investment Program (SIP). The initial iteration of the CCT programme involved payments of 12.90 USD (NGN 5,000) paid bi-monthly to the poorest and most vulnerable people in Nigeria (primarily residing in rural areas), as identified in the National Social Register (NSR) (Sanni, 2020). The CCT is funded through three combined sources, namely recovered loot from Switzerland belonging to former president Sani Abacha (USD322million), credit from the Work Bank USD500million, and National SIP USD 1.289billion captured in the Federal government budget (Sanni, 2020).

A three-stage targeting process based on geographical targeting, community-based validation, and proxy-means-testing (PMT) was used to identify the poorest and most vulnerable households in the NSR (Okoye & Adeniran, 2020). Before COVID-19, the NSR contained 2.6 million households (Obiakor, 2020), covering a mere 2% of the over 80 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty. However, the government announced plans to expand the coverage by 1 million households during the first month of the lockdown; given the rural bias of the initial NSR, the following criteria were set for selecting the individuals/families to be included (Chafe, 2020):

  • Urban low-income individuals/households with an account balance of USD 12.90 (NGN 5,000) or less.

  • Individuals across Nigeria who regularly top up their mobile phones with between USD 0.26–0.52 (NGN 100–200).

  • Daily wage earners and people who live with a disability.

Disbursement started in earnest on April 1, 2020. The Humanitarian Affairs Ministry started the disbursement of 51.58 USD (NGN 20,000) to families registered in the NSR (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Despite this timeliness, the CCT programme underperformed regarding its comprehensiveness, targeting, and coverage.

The size, scope, and reach of the CCT were insignificant, given the scope of the problem. The total amount allocated per household was also inadequate to cover the basic needs for a family of five, the average number in a Nigerian home (World Bank, 2018). Additionally, the NSR, through which the fund recipients are determined, excludes most people living in extreme poverty in Nigeria. The NSR consists of about 11 million people from about 2.6 million households. Unfortunately, this does not begin to scrape the bottom of the barrel, especially as, pre-COVID-19 and the lockdown, it was estimated that around 87 million Nigerians lived in poverty (Kharas, Hamel & Hofer, 2018). The pandemic and ensuing movement restrictions likely increased the number of people in extreme poverty.

Heeding the public outcry that the NSR did not truly capture the most vulnerable people affected by the lockdown, on April 13, the government announced plans to expand the NSR by including an additional one million households based on the criteria mentioned above. However, the process was shrouded in mystery as the government failed to disclose any necessary details of the programme or the process of profiling new households. Confirmation of the expansion did not come till August 2020 (The Guardian, 2020c), when the ministry announced that the NSR had been expanded to 3.7 million households (15.5 million individuals) as of June 2020 (three months after the most profound impacts of the lockdown had been felt). However, in terms of reach and coverage, this expansion paled insignificance, as it only covered 19% of people living in poverty in Nigeria.

Secondly, there is the issue of poor targeting. The use of the NSR as the method for identifying the recipients of the CCT was uninformed. Their approach used the NSR to identify the poorest 30% of households in states with the highest poverty levels, the majority of which were not significantly impacted by the initial lockdown (Okoye & Adeniran, 2020). Since the lockdown affected the three most urbanised cities, this identification approach excluded the urban poor and informal sector workers who suffered the shocks in livelihoods due to the restrictions on movement (Okoye & Adeniran, 2020). Unfortunately, this population was largely excluded from the potential pool of beneficiaries.

Some other systematic issues also limited the program’s effectiveness. Nigeria lacks a robust information management system, or comprehensive database on informal workers, making digital payments difficult. As a result, people had to receive the funds at physical locations; given the movement restrictions, many people in the NSR who were due to receive payments could not do so. On a governance level, the government did not make any announcements on crucial details of the intervention, limiting the scope for accountability. Additionally, no information is known about who is getting the money, and no data is collected on the national level on the impact of the transfers during the lockdown.

Fuel and electricity subsidies were other crucial social protection programmes implemented to mitigate the pandemic effect on the population. Fuel price was reduced from USD 0.37 to 0.32 (NGN 145–125) in March (Olisa, 2020) and USD 0.28 (NGN 108) in May. In April, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) suspended the payment of the new electricity tariff scheduled to commence on April 2nd till 2021, citing the impact of COVID-19 as one of the reasons for the suspension (Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, 2020). However, given that the electricity supply in Nigeria is low and erratic, the reductions were less likely to impact the poorest and most vulnerable households directly. About 97 million Nigerians are yet to connect to the electricity grid, of whom an overwhelming majority reside in rural areas or urban slums (Energy Central, 2020). Given the relationship between access to electricity and vulnerability, it is evident that the poor and vulnerable people were not the beneficiaries of these reductions. As with electricity, the poor and vulnerable consume relatively less fuel directly. Therefore, reducing fuel prices could only benefit them indirectly through other channels, such as reduced transportation costs or increased food security. However, given the unique challenges of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown, those channels were also affected by other market forces.

As of June 2020, the government removed the long-held price cap on the fuel prices (fuel subsidy), causing fuel prices to rise to a high of USD 0.43 (NGN 162) as of December 2020 (BBC, 2020). In September, the implementation of the new electricity tariffs, which were suspended in April, was reinstated. With the removal of the electricity subsidy, the electricity tariff increased from USD 0.079 (NGN 30.23) to USD 0.16 (NGN 62.23) for all consumers with an electricity supply above 12 hours per day. Fuel and electricity subsidies were removed due to the decline in government revenues over the year.

Temporary food supply to vulnerable groups was also implemented. On April 8, 2020, the Federal Government announced the distribution of 77,000 metric tons of food to vulnerable households in the three affected lockdown states (Obiakor, 2020). However, the distribution modalities were not precise at the time, and the process was impaired by low transparency and accountability (African Arguments, 2020). The lockdown led to a mass hunger crisis in Nigeria induced by reduced incomes, food shortages, and the hike in food prices. A survey conducted during the first week of the lockdown revealed that 72% of Nigerians were mainly concerned about the lockdown because of hunger (NOIPolls, 2020), 40% were worried that there would be a lack of food for the poor, 21% worried that people would die of hunger, and 5% worried that the cost of food would rise. Given the sheer scale of the crisis, 77,000 metric tons of food could not likely tend to the needs of a significant proportion of people that lacked adequate food. It was alleged at specific points that the food palliatives were hijacked by state politicians (Eranga, 2020). In October 2020, it was revealed that many state governments had been hoarding COVID-19 food palliatives. The loot was discovered when citizens overran several government-owned warehouses and found food meant to be distributed to households across many states in Nigeria during the lockdowns.

Finally, in response to housing and electricity challenges faced by vulnerable households during the pandemic, the government announced a USD 818.3 billion (NGN 317.29 billion) Mass Housing Program (MHP) (Olarewaju, 2020). The strategy was revealed to have two tracks. Track one involved building 300,000 homes across the country within a year, and track 2, was to leverage existing institutions to develop an additional 25,515 houses across the country within the same period (KPMG, 2020a). In addition, the programme also proposed installing Solar Home Systems (SHS) for 5 million households across Nigeria (Olarewaju, 2020). Funding for the MHP will be derived from the USD 5.93 billion (NGN2.3trillion) National Economic Sustainability Plan (a bouncing back plan for Nigeria) approved by the Federal Executive Council on June 24th. While well-conceived, these programmes had no immediate impact on people during the different phases of the lockdown, as they were not being delivered immediately.

There were stimulus packages for MSMEs such as loans, tax waivers, and loan term restructuring, among others. On March 23, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced a targeted credit facility of USD 128.95 million (50 billion NGN) available for households and SMEs that were impacted by the pandemic (CBN, 2020). The credit facility was financed through the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund (MSMEDF). Through the fund, eligible households can access up to USD 7,737.06 (NGN 3million), while businesses can access up to USD 64,475.48 (NGN 24 million) (CBN, 2020). The CBN also announced regulatory forbearance for the restructuring loans, allowing a one-year moratorium for CBN intervention facilities, and granting leave to Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) to consider restructuring loan terms and tenor for businesses/households affected by the pandemic. A key strength of this credit was that the funds are available to businesses and households impacted by the COVID-19 induced restrictions and are gender-neutral. The credit facility avails up to USD 7737.06 (NGN3 million) each for low-income families and USD 64,475.48 (NGN25million) each for impacted businesses (CBN, 2020). However, the critical challenge was that this credit facility was targeted at the formal urban sector, having no impact on the informal sector.

The application procedures are, at best, limiting and, at worst, exclusionary. The lower literacy levels and access to banking services for poor households and businesses in the informal sector limit their access to formal credit facilities. The applications are made available through an online portal that requires all intending applicants to access a phone/computer and internet facilities and the know-how to navigate the portal. For the poorest and most vulnerable households and businesses, this limits their access to this opportunity. Additionally, the application is required to contain Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), business registration documents (for businesses), and a business plan with clear evidence of the adverse effects of the pandemic and the opportunity that the funding will provide—all considerable barriers for informal sector workers to access the package. The constraints raise several issues, mainly because obtaining a BVN requires access to a bank account, which only about 40% of Nigerians have. Getting a BVN also requires a valid form of national identification, which 21% (Salazar, 2018) of Nigerians (consisting of the most excluded and vulnerable) currently lack access to. The requirement of a business registration document immediately precludes informal sector businesses. The business plan aspect blurs channels of accountability, allowing individuals to be refused the loan based on someone’s appraisal of their plan.

Finally, access to the loans also requires proof of collateral, such as property documents or moveable assets registered in the National Collateral Registry, and it is not interest-free. Communications around the availability of and access the loans are also insufficient, excluding many low-income households, businesses, and the informal sector.

The Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) released a tax relief plan, which included delaying tax filing deadlines (KPMG, 2020b), waiving late returns penalty for personal or corporate income taxpayers who pay their tax liability early, suspension of field audits, 50% tax rebate to all Nigerian companies who retain their workers from 1 March to 31 December 2020, and leniency for taxpayers facing challenges in sourcing FOREX to settle their tax liability (KPMG, 2020c). However, for the tax waivers and rebates made available by FIRS, the benefits are available to businesses registered under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, accruing only to businesses in the formal sector, exhibiting another urban formal sector bias. While necessary and beneficial to formal sector business, this bill provides no support for informal sector businesses (who contribute 65% of Nigeria’s total GDP and employ 80% of the labour force).

In March, the CBN announced the extension of USD 257.9million (NGN100 billion) credit facilities to equip businesses in the health sector to deal with the pandemic’s challenges. Those eligible for this credit programme include health product manufacturers, health service providers, pharmaceutical and medical product distributors, and logistics services. The programme covers all products and services they provide, and the credit assistant is designed to run from April till December 31, 2030, (KPMG, 2020a). This scheme was funded by the CBN's Real Sector Support Facility-Differentiated Cash Reserves Requirement (RSSF-DCRR) (George Etomi & Partners, 2020). Pharmaceutical companies also received six-month import duty waivers on medical (KPMG, 2020d).

The health sector intervention highlights the urban formal sector bias of the interventions. Given that the health sector is an overly regulated and standardised field, and the informal sector is characterised by the absence of health insurance plans, credit assistance for the health industry, and import duty waivers for pharmaceutical firms did not accrue to the informal sector directly. Essentially, given the nature of informality in the country and the poor understanding of the make-up of the informal sector, the government did not/were unable to provide any support that was created directly to fit the landscape of informality and address the issues being faced.

The socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on the Nigerian education system limited over 35 million children from accessing learning. Before the pandemic, students attending public schools in Nigeria were granted daily access to meals provided by the federally-funded school-feeding programmes (Obiakor & Adeniran, 2020) introduced in 2016 as part of the government SIP to support feeding 24 million school children. According to the World Food Programme's estimate, in 2019, over 9 million students in over 40,000 public schools were provided with daily meals. In addition to feeding, this initiative also provides students access to essential health services such as immunisation. To mitigate this, the government continued the school-feeding programme during the school closures; the programme spent over NGN523.3 million (Federal Ministry of Education, 2020). However, there were no clear policies on its implementation and targeted beneficiaries.

Powered by UNESCO and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) developed a Learn at Home Programme (LHP) geared toward reducing the effects of school closures on learning for Nigerian students. Through the LHP—in collaboration with educational technology companies—the FME developed virtual learning platforms, distributed links to e-learning resources, strengthened states’ radio and television education programmes, and provided printed take-home materials for student activity books, worksheets, and assessment cards. The learning mitigation responses did not provide clear-cut actions on responding to learning disruptions for children or addressing the digital literacy and infrastructure divide.

Impacts, Gaps, and Challenges of Mitigation Response

While these mitigation measures show pro-poor concerns by national policymakers, an analysis of the modalities around the relief measures/mechanisms presents several gaps that hindered the equitability of the government’s response. These obstacles revolve around the deficiencies and knowledge gaps inherent in the formation and implementation of the mitigation measures, resulting in poor access and impact for the people most affected by the COVID-19 shock. The poverty-targeted CCT was poorly targeted because its provision was skewed toward the rural households, who were less likely to be negatively affected by the lockdown’s immediate impact than the urban poor, who were the first to feel the brunt of the lockdown. Despite increasing coverage by including more urban poor households in the NSR, the CCT only reached a minority of families (Okoye & Adeniran, 2020). No survey beneficiary accessed CCT.

Challenges with targeting also stem from limited information and data on the large informal sector in Nigeria. This deficiency complicates targeting support schemes to the most vulnerable during this crisis. It limits the government’s ability to provide relief for individuals engaged in the undocumented informal economy. Therefore, most of the government’s assistance schemes targeted the formal economy, providing limited coverage for informal economy workers. As a result of poor targeting, inherent weaknesses inadvertently create barriers that exclude the most vulnerable sections of the population. The majority (98%) of the field survey respondents who had reported knowing about government support mentioned that they could not access the support because the terms and conditions of the support were exclusionary. Those who met the eligibility criteria reported that the application process was demanding. The many bureaucratic access processes also meant that many poor women could not access them.

Another problem worth noting is the weaknesses in the delivery channel of programmes. This was especially pertinent in the education sector. The government's available distance learning modalities, including low-tech options (TV, radio), and high-tech options (online), posed challenges for ensuring inclusive and quality learning, given Nigeria’s literacy levels and infrastructure challenges. The delivery system for the poverty-targeted support schemes was also inadequate due to inadequate information on intended beneficiaries, a lack of adequate database, and inadequate digital payment systems. For example, the CCT and food rations were disbursed in person at specified locations, beginning during the first week of the lockdown. On the one hand, given the strictness with which security officials enforced the lockdown, it would have been difficult to access the collection point at best, difficult and dangerous. On the other hand, this delivery method was prone to amplify the risk of disease transmission during collection.

Many of the support schemes implemented in response to COVID-19 were insufficient for meeting essential needs, supporting struggling households and businesses, or mitigating the learning loss induced by the school closures. For example, despite expanding the CCT, the benefits only accrued to only approximately 13% of the poorest individuals.

The lack of adequate consultation with stakeholders was another challenge to the programme delivery. While half of the respondents of the education questionnaire for the field survey acknowledged that they were aware of the government’s various distance learning programmes, only 10% approved of their effectiveness. Also, 80% reported a lack of access to resources to support. Almost all respondents who acknowledged the government's provisions reported that the guidelines to co-opt available options were not helpful. Eighty per cent of respondents mentioned that the government did not provide access to any tools to support the distance learning measures they made available.

Majority of the teachers (90%), parents (93%) and students (90%) surveyed reported that their government did not involve them or engage in the decisions to close schools or during the process of developing a COVID-19 education contingency plan. The lack of consultation of critical stakeholders underpins power and accountability relations between decision-makers and the poorest and vulnerable people in society. Another reason for the inadequacy is the government's preparedness to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. One of the essential criticisms was that the government's response effort was the evidence of poor planning and the failure to consult and engage necessary stakeholders in developing their response strategy.

The pandemic and its policies also highlight the social contract and trust issues between citizens and the government. Most of the field survey respondents and FGD participants acknowledged that they trusted the government’s initial response to close schools and ban movement was necessary to curb the virus’s spread. However, as the months passed, there was evidence that some government actions have only served to erode the initial trust they might have built during the early phase of government policy response. Some key actions and events stand out. First, it is essential to note that Nigerians had low trust levels in their government before the pandemic. During the FGDs conducted in Abuja, one resounding comment was that the people had no government expectations as they had been disappointed multiple times. Instead, when asked for recommendations on what can be improved to ensure better access to social protection, all participants called on the private sector, civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, and well-meaning Nigerians to devise ways to support them. Overall, citizens’ trust in government declined even further.

Conclusion and Policy Implications

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has created one of the worst economic crises since the great depression, and the evidence points to the fact that the economic fallout will long outpace the health crisis. Economies worldwide face the adverse economic impact of the lockdown and a global economic slowdown. However, for Nigeria, the effect was intensified by a third factor, the decline in commodity prices that preceded the lockdown measures. Given the pre-COVID-19 conditions, with falling per capita income, high inflation, and an overdependence on oil, the pandemic has placed the nation at a critical juncture. The impacts of the pandemic are not short-term only but will endure. Overall, the crisis has unevenly impacted different segments of the population. The worst has been the poor in urban and rural areas, which are not the most covered with many programmes.

The pandemic has become a crisis of uneven and ephemeral responses. While the government quickly implemented several support schemes, the response has been chiefly inadequate and unevenly distributed. Social safety nets have primarily benefited the rural poor, while support schemes targeted toward businesses have wholly excluded the most vulnerable sector—MSMEs operating in the informal economy. There was no direct effort to target workers in this sector. This population's lack of social protection makes them especially vulnerable to shocks as they cannot count on protection provided by poverty-targeted support schemes or social insurance.

Additionally, the schemes have been transient, mostly stop-gap emergency responses that were not accompanied by adequate policy and institutional structures that provide long-term social protection for informal economy workers. There is no evidence that the government is picking the suitable lessons from the crisis, focusing on recovering the economy instead of revamping it to be more inclusive. In the absence of data, stakeholder dialogue is critical to garnering information. Unfortunately, they did not consult or get the necessary input from critical stakeholders or scheme users in forming and implementing the socio-economic support schemes. The government's poor use of evidence and inclusive social dialogue hindered its policy and mitigation responses.

The neutrality of mitigation strategies implemented to address the pandemic's socio-economic impacts could deepen poverty and inequality in Nigeria. The consequences are already evident and will continue to linger unless conscious action is taken. As the threat of a second wave looms, social protection must be built around any health responses. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed gaps in Nigeria’s social protection systems and stressed the importance of developing robust national social protection systems, establishing social protection floors, and covering working in all forms of employment. The awareness of these gaps has created the impetus for policymakers to reflect on the space social protection should occupy in their socio-economic models. Longer-term strategies for extending social protection and support should be part of broader, integrated strategies to promote inclusive development. When developed and implemented correctly, social protection can contribute to more comprehensive recovery plans and policies that simultaneously address structural socio-economic weaknesses. While mobilising the resources will be difficult, the cost of inaction would be detrimental to the country. In this light, we recommend designing context-specific solutions to pandemic crises considering existing inequalities to provide inclusive solutions. For this to be effective, there is the need for a robust database of vulnerable citizens, particularly in its high informal sector. In addition, permanent physical, technological, and policy structures must be built to support the informal sector. Finally, for the listed recommendations to be approved by citizens, social dialogue between the state and citizens must be improved.