Executive Summary
Citizens’ Action to End Poverty and Injustice is ActionAid Nigeria’s bold and radical commitment to working more closely with allies, especially social movements, in jointly identifying pain points and taking collective action to eradicate poverty and social injustice in Nigeria. We recognise that addressing structural and systemic inequalities and rights violations in a socio-cultural setting like Nigeria requires a more nuanced and dynamic approach.
Nigeria, a country with significant natural and human resources, continues to face challenges along political and socio-economic lines, reflected in the expanding insecurity, gender and income inequalities, and widening poverty. We continue to witness the failure of successive governments to close these gaps, despite overwhelming evidence of deepening poverty that is fueling citizens’ dissatisfaction. This presents both a threat and an opportunity: a threat to the gains made over the years in social justice and poverty eradication, and an opportunity to rechannel citizens’ dissatisfaction as a tool for social change. AAN believes that mobilizing the active agency of the people to organize around their pain points for transformative change is more urgent and beneficial, making programmatic and economic sense to invest in.
AAN, therefore, aims to empower citizens to advance the rights of the constituents we serve—the ultra-marginalized groups of women and girls, young people, and persons with disabilities. This will be more purposeful in achieving our objectives.
Citizens’ Action to End Poverty and Injustice demonstrates our many years of engagement in Nigeria, and as our 5th strategy, it builds on the previous ones—Fighting Poverty in the Midst of Plenty (2004–2008); Fighting Poverty in the Midst of Plenty II (2009–2013); Take Action: End Poverty (2014–2018); and Social Justice to End Poverty (2018–2023). It is rooted in our community engagement, scaling up tested models, and driving deeper our campaign and advocacy actions by working more with movements and allies. Citizens’ Action to End Poverty and Injustice is our commitment to being more agile and nimble in mobilizing the communities we serve to act on various issues that affect their lives. It seeks to contribute to AAN’s constituents living a life of dignity, free from oppression and poverty. By focusing on addressing multidimensional poverty with specific emphasis on livelihoods and resilience, improved living standards, and facilitating equitable access to education and health, AAN hopes to address the root causes of poverty and injustice.
To achieve this, we have founded this commitment on four critical but interlinked actions: ORGANISE, ACT, SHIFT, and THRIVE (OAST). This means supporting citizens to organize in collectives, act to shift negative conditions that keep them in the cycle of poverty and injustice. When citizens do this, enabling conditions are achieved, and they begin to thrive.
It is, therefore, our ten-year framework by which our effectiveness in achieving our goal, objectives, and sustainable impact on the lives of poor and excluded people will be measured and judged. It is also our response to the deepening inequality and poverty in Nigeria, which requires us to adopt a radical approach by enhancing people’s power to act. It is, therefore, built on our commitment to being business-like, feminist attuned, and collaborative in all our actions as we work with our constituents to achieve poverty eradication and social justice in Nigeria.
In the next ten years, we are prioritizing the following:
Priority 1: Secure, Resilient, and Thriving Communities.
Priority 2: Improved Living Standards: Thriving Communities.
Priority 3: Good Governance: Equitable Access and Thriving Communities.
Ultimately, through our interventions, we are committed to lifting five million Nigerians out of poverty, especially those who are ultra-marginalised and vulnerable, by the end of 2033. To achieve our goal, we recognize the need for an efficient and effective system that is agile and responsive. Hence, our fourth priority focuses on our system:
Priority 4: Agile, Effective, and Thriving Organisation.