Oxfam has worked to address poverty and inequality in Nigeria since the 1960s. Under the last country strategy, 12 projects were implemented in 11 states, working with over 40 local implementing partners.

Work focused on building sustainable livelihoods of the poor, transforming attitudes about women’s rights and roles, increasing active citizenship and the accountability of the public and private sectors, and saving lives.

Oxfam Nigeria is transitioning into an influencing country program with the first phase of this journey spanning 2021 – 2026 during which the influencing portfolio will be progressively increasing and program portfolio will be progressively decreasing. 

Oxfam’s Approach in Nigeria
1. Partnerships: To be a formidable force for change, Oxfam Nigeria will work with other organizations in order to learn, bring distinct and complementary skills and experiences, and to drive for greater collective impact (more than the sum of our parts!). We will proactively look for partners that are different from ourselves and look to work with those.

2. Ensuring women's rights are at the heart of everything we do: Women’s rights are central to our whole program of work and investments in Nigeria. We will be guided by feminist leadership principles, and therefore will be conscious of power dynamics. We will champion and encourage women leaders and managers, particularly young women. We will seek to nurture a culture that creates space for everyone to speak and be heard.

3. Use Programme Quality and Knowledge Management as evidence for Influencing: Oxfam Nigeria sees evidence and data as a foundation stone for effective programming for influence. Developing innovative and effective models of change that have demonstrated results, and then communicating these to policymakers, is an effective way of achieving impact at scale and requires solid monitoring data and clear write-ups of the evidence.

4. Ensuring that our programs do no harm: The safety and security of Oxfam staff and those we support and stand alongside is critical to our work. We will do everything possible to ensure that the risk to safety is not increased by our activities, to manage risk where it does arise, and to have clear reactive procedures in place for emergency situations.

5. Areas we will seek to excel in or invest in to build our capacities: As described already, Oxfam Nigeria will be strengthening its influencing model of change and will be significantly reducing the scale of its own direct programming. This shift will require the addition of some new skills and the development of others.

6. Humanitarian preparedness: As a result of the shift to an influencing model, Oxfam Nigeria will stop delivering humanitarian work as part of its core programme. Only when emergencies occur in existing program areas will Oxfam Nigeria respond. Through its influence approach, it will also build the resilience of communities and local actors to anticipate and prevent disasters (with early warning systems), mitigate the consequences of crises and bounce back quickly when disaster hits.