By Chioma Obinna

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has urged the Federal Government to ensure that deprived and out-of-school children are fully captured in Nigeria’s National Social Register, NSR, warning that leaving them out would undermine the country’s fight against poverty.

Speaking at a stakeholder engagement conference organised by the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office, NASSCO, in Lagos, UNICEF’s Social Policy Manager, Muhammad Okorie, said the NSR is a vital tool for tackling poverty, but must deliberately identify children living in deprivation for interventions to have real impact.

He said: “At UNICEF, we are advocating that deprived children must also be fully captured. Using the social register, we can, for instance, identify out-of-school children and target them appropriately. This helps us create more targeted and tailored interventions.”

Okorie explained that while the NSR was initially designed to capture monetary poverty, it is now evolving to reflect multidimensional poverty—including education, health, and child vulnerabilities but gaps remain in identifying the most at-risk children.

“Poverty is dynamic; people fall into poverty and others move out. The register must reflect these changes so that targeting is always based on current information, not assumptions,” he added.

Okorie stressed that UNICEF’s advocacy centres on inclusiveness. He noted that globally recognised parameters guide the NSR’s design, adopting a “life-cycle approach” that considers vulnerabilities across children, youth, and the elderly.

He called on the government to make inclusion of deprived children a policy priority, mandating states to maintain functional systems for constant updates.

“All MDAs and development partners active in poverty reduction must be mandated to target their beneficiaries from the social register,” he said.

The conference, themed “Advancing Social Protection through the National Social Register: A Strategic Planning Tool for a Resilient Nigeria,” brought together federal and state stakeholders.

Speaking, the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, represented by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Sam Egube, disclosed that the state has committed over ₦130 billion in 2025 alone to targeted interventions.

He said the Lagos State Single Social Register already captures more than 800,000 households and 2.7 million individuals across 20 local government areas.

“We are making sure that every naira spent leads to tangible social impact. We intend to increase our budgetary commitment to this sector by at least 30 percent in 2026 about ₦170 billion,” he stated.