Stakeholders have called for urgent policy reforms to ensure informal workers in Nigeria are included in government social intervention programmes, citing poor digital access and weak implementation as key barriers. The demand was made on Monday in Abuja during a roundtable dialogue organised by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in partnership with Paradigm Initiative (PIN). The event, titled "Digitalisation and Social Protection for Informal Workers in Nigeria," brought together civil society organisations, labour representatives, and informal workers to identify gaps in existing systems and recommend inclusive solutions.
Yesmin Salako Ejiwumi, Programme Officer and Team Lead at CITAD, said the increasing digitisation of social protection programmes fails to consider the realities of informal workers, including artisans, traders, cobblers and tailors in rural areas. She noted that many lack mobile phones or digital literacy, making it impossible to participate in mandatory online registration processes. According to her, previous government intervention programmes have automatically excluded such groups due to digital requirements.
Ejiwumi said the dialogue aimed to co-create policy recommendations that ensure inclusive and rights-respecting digital social protection systems. She stressed that while digitisation offers efficiency and wider reach, it also risks deepening exclusion without deliberate inclusion measures.
Shamsudeen Abdulrazak, Executive Director of Glowing Minds Initiatives, stated that the roundtable sought to identify barriers to access, examine digital inclusion challenges, and generate evidence-based policy recommendations. He said technology shaped the 2023 elections and will influence the 2027 polls, underscoring the urgency of inclusive digital frameworks. Abdulrazak added that the recommendations would be presented to government institutions and lawmakers for reform. He called for a complete overhaul of Nigeria's current social protection framework, particularly by expanding digital penetration to rural communities.
Abdulrazak calls for a complete overhaul of Nigeria's social protection framework while simultaneously asserting that recommendations will be presented to government institutions, creating a contradiction between the scale of change demanded and the incremental process proposed. The call targets informal workers in rural areas who lack phones and digital literacy, meaning any delay in structural reform directly blocks their access to support. Without immediate infrastructure investment, the existing digital registration systems will continue to exclude the very population they aim to assist.
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