Date of Conferral

5-14-2025

Date of Award

May 2025

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Policy and Administration

Advisor

Gloria Billingsley

Abstract

Despite several social investment programmes (SIPs) to reduce poverty, Nigeria had a high poverty rate, particularly in remote rural areas. The SIPs included conditional cash transfers (CCTs) to eligible households under certain conditions, such as extreme poverty in remote rural areas without access to water, electricity, shelter, basic health care, and education. While a few studies conducted on the effectiveness of CCTs have shown that Nigeria invested significant resources in poverty alleviation without the desired results due to factors like poor implementation and corruption, none reflects the perspective of CCT beneficiaries. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap by exploring the impact of the CCT in alleviating extreme poverty in remote rural areas in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory as perceived by program beneficiaries, policymakers, and implementers. The narrative policy framework was used as a conceptual framework. Generic qualitative research design was adopted to collect data through participant interviews, observations, and document analysis. Thematic analysis was done using NVivo to better understand CCT’s impact. The study's findings revealed that the CCT program temporarily reduced poverty for some participants, but did not meet its other poverty alleviation goals, such as improved health and educational outcomes or participant self-sustainability. The CCT program’s potential impact is limited by challenges such as short intervention period, the high cost of goods and services compared to the amount paid, limited cash distribution centers, and long travel distances to collect cash. The social change benefit of this study is participant feedback that policymakers and implementers can use to improve the CCT program's poverty alleviation outcomes.

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