Nigeria’s Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction ministry’s move to overhaul the country’s humanitarian response system is bold in a country where emergencies often move faster than institutions meant to handle them and where poverty statistics sound like tragedy converted into policy language.
Development Diaries reports that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr Bernard Doro, has said that the ministry is finalising an expansive coordination framework to overhaul Nigeria’s humanitarian response architecture.
More than 25 million Nigerians require humanitarian assistance every year, and over 60 percent of the population lives in multidimensional poverty.
That figure is not an abstract statistic because it represents real people navigating insecurity, climate disasters, displacement, and economic shock without sufficient support.
Nigeria’s humanitarian landscape has been described by many as chaotic, fragmented, and heavily influenced by political interests rather than human needs. This is the context in which the new framework is being announced.
According to the minister, Nigeria’s humanitarian system has for years been weakened by duplication of efforts, agencies working in silos, limited coordination among federal, state, and local governments, and data that is rarely shared when it is needed most.
The promise of the new framework is that coordination will become the backbone of humanitarian action. There will be early warning systems, improved collaboration among institutions, clear accountability benchmarks, and a National Council on Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction to align work across all tiers of government.
While the plan sounds impressive, the biggest challenge Nigeria faces is not a shortage of frameworks but the distance between policy and political will.
Nigeria has a long history of announcing reforms with great enthusiasm only for them to be undone by institutional rivalry, weak implementation, and political interference. The fear many experts express is that this new humanitarian framework may meet the same fate if the underlying political culture remains unchanged.
The system that continues to fail Nigerians is the humanitarian governance structure. It fails because decision-makers prioritise political agendas over preventive action, institutions designed to work together often behave like competitors guarding territory, funding is inconsistent and sometimes diverted, coordination is seen as a suggestion rather than a mandate, and above all, vulnerable citizens are still treated as recipients of charity instead of rights holders.
There is also a clear list of duty-bearers responsible for ensuring the reform works. These include the federal government under President Bola Tinubu, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction led by Dr Doro, state governments across the federation, especially those in the northeast and flood-prone regions, local governments that have statutory community-level responsibilities, and the newly created National Council on Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction.
Humanitarian response is a rights issue, not a goodwill gesture. Nigeria’s obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Kampala Convention require the government to take proactive measures to protect citizens affected by conflict, natural disasters, and economic vulnerability.
Therefore, when flood alerts arrive late, when displacement camps lack food and water, and when insecurity pushes communities into hunger, the state is failing its human rights duties.
As the new framework is rolled out, citizens need to pay attention to the political interests surrounding it.
Will federal and state governments cooperate? Will the new council be allowed to function without interference? Will agencies abandon their territorial tendencies and share data? Will transparent financing be enforced?
But perhaps most importantly, will women, girls, young people, and persons with disabilities be at the centre of planning instead of being treated as an afterthought?
Citizens also have a role to play. Demand that the government publish the full humanitarian framework, monitor state disaster preparedness budgets, engage through civic groups, and report gaps in humanitarian response. This is crucially important because public pressure remains one of the strongest tools for accountability, especially in systems where silence often becomes a form of endorsement.
Institutions, on their part, must operationalise the new humanitarian council without delay. They must create an accessible early warning system across all states, ensure inclusive planning, strengthen financing and reporting structures, and end the isolationist culture that prevents agencies from working together.
Nigeria has enough experience to know that frameworks alone do not save lives; only institutions that place citizens above politics can do that.
