In December 2010, the President announced a massive job creation programme, the National Job Creation Scheme, to be kick-started with seed funding of N50 billion, to create thousands of new jobs in urban and rural communities‘ across the 36 states and the FCT (Akogun and Nzeshi, 2010). Some of these labour-intensive public works would be funded by conditional grants and targeted at sectors critical to achievement of the MDGs.

However, the status of the scheme is currently unclear and, overall, there is little in the way of public works programmes in Nigeria. The NDE has Special Public Works (which combine direct labour projects and education) (Lagos Indicator, 2011), but these have declined recently as a result of the general drop in social spending.

The Ministry of Works is more involved in machine-intensive and contractor-conducted works, with new contracts needing a certain percentage of labour inputs, but it is not clear that this would be a public works-type programme in the sense of social protection. However, the International Labour Organization (ILO) is encouraging the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Labour and Productivity to conduct labour-focused public works, rather than infrastructure-focused works led by foreign contractors. Other international organizations draw on community labour to implement programmes. For example, UNDP‘s Local Development Programme works with LGAs in Ando and Bajesa states, with a community-driven approach to identifying needs which are then provided with the assistance of local people. However, the labour component is a secondary objective.

Reports suggest that a number of states invest in direct employment or job creation schemes, e.g. Lagos, Edo and Ekiti (World Bank, 2011a).  Lagos has implemented its own public works-type programmes: recent reports suggest that over 2,000 people have been employed through the state Rice for Job Scheme, the Agric-Yes Scheme and the Lagos Ignite Enterprise Programme. It is not clear whether such programmes are poverty targeted.