THE STATE AND CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL SECURITY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Presently, Nigeria is yet to establish a credible and sustainable social security scheme for her citizens as practiced in advanced democracies and in most of the OPEC member states. Thus, the increasing incidence of unemployment, abysmal infrastructural facilities, poor health care delivery system, low life expectancy, high level of illiteracy among others, points to the crisis of social insecurity in Nigeria. This pathetic state of affairs consistently cast some doubts on the capacity of the Nigerian state to keep to the tenets of the social contract that subsist between the state and the citizens. Using documentary method of data collection and the good governance model as its theoretical framework, this paper explored the nexus between the constitutional declaration of social rights and citizen’s welfare and the traumatic incidence of social insecurity experienced in Nigeria. The paper observed that beyond the constitutional declaration of social rights and citizens’ welfare as entrenched in the Nigerian constitution, the Nigerian state has not taken concrete steps toward safeguarding social security for Nigerians. The paper among other things recommended the inclusion of a clause in the constitutional provisions to make the declaration of social rights and citizens welfare enforceable in Nigeria