Mahdi Garba (Lead writer)
Fatima Sanusi, 27, has been benefiting from Jigawa State’s Conditional Cash Transfer Programme for the past five months. After being enrolled in the programme in Mafitar Sarki community in Hadejia Local Government Area (LGA), she began receiving 5,000 Naira (about US$ 4) monthly.
She is expected to benefit from this scheme for 12 consecutive months.
Launched in 2021, the Conditional Cash Transfer programme provides financial support to pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers to encourage the use of health facilities. Since its commencement, over 21,000 women have benefited from the programme, and 8,610 are currently enrolled. To qualify, prospective beneficiaries are expected to provide evidence of routine immunisation; attending antenatal care at a government health facility; participating in pregnancy care classes; and preparing healthy and nutritious meals at home among other requirements.
Hafsat Yakubu, another beneficiary of the cash transfer programme, said she uses the money to support her husband in raising their five children. But she wants it increased. “It is really [helpful], but I believe if it is increased to 10,000 or 15,000 monthly, we will appreciate the government even more,” the 20-year-old mother said.
Nigeria continues to face maternal, neonatal, and child health crisis, with persistently high maternal mortality rates, low immunisation coverage, and inadequate access to quality reproductive and newborn care. These challenges are worsened by factors such as poverty, weak health systems, underfunding, and regional disparities, particularly in underserved areas in northern Nigeria.
Identifying women in need
Hassan Babandi, the Desk Officer implementing the Conditional Cash Transfer at the Jigawa State Rehabilitation Board — the agency tasked with handling the conditional welfare grant for pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers — highlighted that when collecting data, they request all data on women of reproductive age, who also fall within the category of poor and vulnerable.
“From the data, they [the officials at the Social Register] cannot identify who is pregnant or lactating. So, when we are looking for 8,000 women, we collect the data of 20,000 women of child-bearing age,” Babandi explained. He added that they have a structure across the 27 LGAs where the local government desk officers and Grievance Readiness Officers (GROs) physically verify the beneficiaries.
Gambo Ibrahim Suleiman, the Director of Administration and Finance, at the Jigawa State Rehabilitation Board, noted that the names of the women are carefully selected from the state’s social register.
Image credit: Nigeria Health Watch
“We identify women from financially unstable families,” Suleiman said. He noted that the families struggle to make ends meet. “We pick 20 women from each of the 27 LGAs in the state. In 2021, we started with 5,740, that is, selecting 20 women from the 287 political wards of the state. After the government assessed the result it has yielded, it increased the beneficiaries to 8,610 in a year.”
He recalled that the payment was initially ₦4,000 before it was increased to ₦5,000.
Suleiman also pointed out that each month, the government disburses a total sum of ₦43 million for the beneficiaries, adding that the programme is solely funded by the state government. He, however, added that for the first two years it commenced, Action Against Hunger has provided technical support, which included capacity-building sessions on data management.
They have witnessed more pregnant women eating nutritious food since the programme started. In addition, they have seen, “reduction in diseases, a decrease in out-of-hospital births, or giving birth under the care of unskilled birth attendants,” Suleiman said.
Technology hiccups
According to Suleiman, the programme faced several challenges, when they started. He noted that many of the beneficiaries did not have bank accounts or a Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) as most lived in hard-to-reach areas.
“Also, it is not every woman who has a phone in the villages. Some of them rely on their husband’s phones or a relative. The programme does not operate like that. It is compulsory for a prospective beneficiary to have a BVN and it is not transferable,” Suleiman noted. He said the women would bring someone’s BVN and claim it is was theirs until they got to the final stage of account opening, only to realise the number did not belong to them. This would make it impossible to enroll them using the data they presented.
The programme is designed so that beneficiaries receive payment notifications directly, rather than through a third-party. This approach, he explained, helps prevent fraud, as using someone else’s phone number could allow them to access the funds using a One-Time Password (OTP), or other means.
Suleiman said the programme is result-oriented and is being tracked in all aspects to ensure quality outcome. They have tracking mechanisms to identify problems and proffer solutions in real time. “We have a toll-free line that allows all beneficiaries to lay any complaint even if it is at midnight without charging them,” he said.
The desk officer further explained that, in addition to cases of women using third-party phone numbers and complaints about scammers, there have also been instances of discrepancies in beneficiaries names.
Aside the monetary incentive, he mentioned that the programme’s social and behavioural component has yielded a positive change as it has impacted people’s attitude towards immunisation, nutrition, and antenatal care.
Image credit: Nigeria Health Watch
An example for others?
According to Suleiman, in May 2025 government officials from Borno and Adamawa States visited Jigawa to interact with them and learn how the state implements its Conditional Cash Transfer programme with the intention of replicating it in their states. “Some development agencies that had previously worked in Jigawa advised them to come to Jigawa to learn. They told them that the state is a good example of a successful incentive-based cash assistance,” he said.
The Jigawa State’s Conditional Cash Transfer programme shows how well-designed financial incentives can drive positive health behaviours and improve maternal and child health outcomes. While the impact so far is commendable, the opportunity lies in scaling this intervention in a way that is both systemic and sustainable.
Across Nigeria, particularly in states grappling with poor health indices, adopting conditional cash transfer programmes like Jigawa’s should not be seen as charity, but as sound public health investment. Globally and locally, these programmes have been shown to reduce maternal mortality, increase immunisation uptake, and drive social change when well-targeted and supported by data.