Nigeria declares 2026 Year of Families and unveils reforms to professionalise caregiving nationwide.
The federal government has pledged to reposition caregiving as a professional sector and a core pillar of Nigeria’s economic development.
To drive the vision, the federal government said it has embarked on institutional reforms to replace outdated systems with agile, data-driven structures, and efforts are underway to ensure full domestication and enforcement of the Child Rights Act and to strengthen the implementation of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act at the grassroots level.
Speaking at the 2026 National Caregivers Summit in Abuja on Monday, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, said the initiative marks a shift from treating social development as charity to recognizing it as a national economic imperative.
At the summit themed, “Future Now: Promoting Inclusion for Every Nigerian Child”, the minister said the gathering was convened to address the Care Economy and the social infrastructure that sustains human dignity.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim said the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu signaled a shift from statistics to people-centered development.
Under the agenda, the government launched the Renewed Hope Social Impact Intervention Programme (RHSII-774) to extend social protection, economic safety nets, and human capital interventions to all 774 local government areas.
Her words: “We gather not merely for dialogue, but to address one of the most fundamental pillars of nation-building: the Care Economy and the social infrastructure that sustains human dignity.
“No nation can attain sustainable prosperity when a significant segment of its productive population is constrained by invisible and unsupported care responsibilities.
“To all caregivers across Nigeria, you are the silent pillars of our national productivity, the custodians of compassion, and the guardians of our collective future.”
She further said the declaration institutionalizes the understanding that the family remains the first school of values, the first line of security, and the foundational economic unit of society.
She added the ministry has also activated costed national action plans to end violence against children, child marriage, and exploitation of women and girls.
In partnership with other ministries and agencies, it is leveraging the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure to digitize social development data for real-time tracking of educational gaps and vulnerabilities.
