Paper short abstract:

The paper interrogates the Nigeria's cash transfer programme in addressing the plight of the most economically vulnerable Nigerians. It concludes that it has suffered a setback due to the narrow value orientation of the political elites.

Paper long abstract:

Addressing the issue of unjust and unequal distribution of resources which euphemistically is referred to as inequalities in the society requires policy redirection towards finding the cause and its remedy. Inequality in income and assets, access to health care services and basic infrastructure have been the key drivers of poverty and vulnerability in Nigeria. Given the prebendal nature of the Nigerian state and the accumulative tendencies of the political elites, the urgent task is to assess the effectiveness of government’s response to the problems of inequality. It has been said that progress in the field of distributive politics depends on the ability of researchers to ascertain empirically who benefits from government decisions on allocation. It is only by collecting empirical evidence on the changing fortunes of various social groups and weighing this evidence against theoretical expectations about who should benefit from government policies that theories of distributive politics can be tested and the understanding of the phenomenon deepened. The seeming failure of the Nigerian government to address the issue of deepening poverty and vulnerabilities is a manifestation of accumulative tendencies of the elite. Empirically, this study seeks to contribute to the growing literature on social provisioning policy in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. It interrogates the cash transfer programme of the Federal Government in addressing the plight of the most economically vulnerable Nigerians. It concludes that it has suffered a setback due to the narrow value orientation of the political elites which led to the poor conception and implementation of the programme