By Law & Society Magazine Editorial Board
As Singapore commits substantial public resources to help families raise children, Nigerian parents are left carrying an ever larger share of the cost of keeping a household afloat
There is a revealing idea behind Singapore’s latest family-support package: Raising a child is not treated solely as a private arrangement between parents and their children. The government accepts that the country’s future is tied to the conditions in which families raise the next generation, and is prepared to put public money behind that belief.
Singapore has announced a package that will provide almost S$70,000 in government support to every eligible Singaporean child from birth to age 17. The support is spread across different stages of childhood rather than paid as a single grant. It includes a S$10,000 Baby Gift, a S$5,000 MediSave grant, contributions to the Child Development Account, annual Child Credits and further support for education.
There is more to the policy than the headline figure. Singapore is also trying to bring down the cost of childcare, expand leave for working parents and make housing more accessible to families with children. The government has set a target of reducing fees at government-supported full-day childcare centres to S$150 a month by 2030, while infant-care fees are expected to fall to S$300.
Singapore is a wealthy city-state with a very different economy, population and fiscal capacity from Nigeria. There is no sensible case for simply converting S$70,000 into naira and proposing that Nigeria should make the same promise.
The interesting part is what lies underneath the numbers.
Singapore is asking how government can make it easier for citizens to raise children.
Nigeria should be asking the same question.
The Nigerian parent knows the cost
For a working Nigerian parent, the cost of raising a child has little to do with the figures announced in a government budget.
It is found in the school-fee notice that arrives at the end of a term. It is in the rising food bill, the transport fare, the rent, the electricity bill and the money set aside for a child’s next medical emergency. For parents of younger children, there is another expense that can be just as difficult: finding someone safe and reliable to look after a child while both parents are at work.
The working day does not end when a Nigerian parent leaves the office.
There is the morning school run, often made before the working day officially begins. There is the scramble to collect children before school closes. There are days when a child falls ill and somebody has to stay home. There are school holidays that do not coincide with annual leave. There are parents who rely on grandparents or relatives because professional childcare is simply too expensive.
These arrangements rarely feature in discussions about productivity or economic growth, yet they have consequences for both.
A woman who leaves employment because childcare has become unaffordable is part of the economy’s loss. So is the professional who turns down a promotion because the new job requires longer hours. So is the parent who spends such a large proportion of a salary on transport, school and childcare that there is little left to save, invest or spend elsewhere.
The cost of family life is therefore also an economic issue.
Nigeria has made the household the shock absorber
Over the years, Nigerian families have absorbed costs that a functioning public system should have reduced.
When electricity is unreliable, households buy generators, inverters and fuel.
When public schools are inadequate, parents pay for private schools.
When public healthcare is unreliable, they seek private treatment.
When public transport is poor, workers pay more to get to work.
When security deteriorates, households spend money protecting themselves.
And when affordable childcare is scarce, families improvise.
The cumulative effect is rarely captured by a single economic indicator. It appears instead in the gradual erosion of household income.
A salary that might once have supported a modest family now disappears into necessities. Savings become difficult. An unexpected illness can wipe out months of careful budgeting. A second child becomes a financial calculation rather than simply a family decision.
For poorer households, the choices are even harsher.
UNICEF has estimated that two out of every three children in Nigeria live in multidimensional poverty, meaning that deprivation extends beyond income to areas including education, health and living conditions.
A country with that level of child deprivation cannot afford to treat family welfare as an afterthought.
Nigeria is not starting from nowhere
There are already discussions within Nigeria about how social protection can reach children more effectively.
UNICEF Nigeria and the Social Policy Research Institute have been examining the feasibility of a Universal Child Grant. The idea deserves serious attention, particularly at a time when inflation and weak household purchasing power are making it harder for families to meet basic needs.
A child benefit would not solve Nigeria’s problems. Nor should it become another government programme in which billions are announced, administrative costs consume a significant portion of the allocation and citizens are left wondering where the money went.
If Nigeria adopts such a programme, it should be designed around transparency from the beginning. Beneficiaries should be identifiable. Payments should be traceable. The programme should be independently audited and its results published.
There should also be a clear understanding that cash support is only one part of family policy.
Childcare is economic infrastructure
Consider childcare.
Nigeria wants more women in the workforce. It wants greater productivity. It wants families to earn more and businesses to grow.
Yet childcare is still largely treated as something parents must solve privately.
That makes little economic sense.
A reliable childcare system allows parents to work. It helps women remain in employment after childbirth. It gives employers a more stable workforce. It provides children with safer early-years care and development.
Government does not necessarily have to build and run every childcare centre. It can regulate providers, support community-based centres, subsidise childcare for low-income families and offer incentives to employers that provide facilities for workers.
The important point is that childcare should be regarded as part of the infrastructure that makes employment possible.
Singapore appears to understand this. Its family package combines financial support with measures intended to lower childcare costs and provide working parents with more time to care for their children.
Nigeria could develop its own version, appropriate to its circumstances.
The same applies to schools and hospitals
There is another way government can support families without putting money directly into their bank accounts: provide services that families can actually rely on.
A good public school is a family benefit.
A functioning primary healthcare centre is a family benefit.
A school feeding programme that reaches the children it is intended for is a family benefit.
A reliable public transport system is a family benefit.
Affordable housing is a family benefit.
Every service that works reduces the amount a household must spend privately to compensate for government failure.
This is why the quality of public services matters so much to working parents.
If a parent has to pay private school fees, private healthcare bills, transport costs, electricity alternatives and childcare costs from the same salary, the family is effectively paying twice: Once through taxes and again through private expenditure.
Then there is the question of priorities
Nigeria’s problem is not simply that government has limited resources.
It is also that citizens have become accustomed to seeing public money deployed in ways that sit uneasily beside the hardship in ordinary households.
Budgets now run into tens of trillions of naira. Yet parents continue to struggle with services that should form the foundation of a functioning society.
The contrast becomes particularly difficult to defend when public office is accompanied by conspicuous privilege.
The country has watched official convoys, expensive government vehicles, foreign trips, large entourages, lavish ceremonies and other forms of discretionary expenditure become part of political life.
There is nothing inherently wrong with government spending money to enable officials to do their jobs. The problem begins when the standard applied to official expenditure appears very different from the standard applied to the ordinary citizen.
A parent who cannot account for a few thousand naira may have to go without food.
A public institution can lose millions and the explanation may never come.
That imbalance should trouble anyone concerned about public trust.
Waste is not an abstract accounting problem
The recent discovery of a fictitious agency carrying a N1.3 billion allocation in Nigeria’s budget offered a particularly striking example of how public money can become detached from public need. The entity did not legally exist, yet it appeared in the budget.
The amount itself is significant.
The larger concern is what the episode says about the systems through which public expenditure is prepared, reviewed and approved.
Every naira that is lost through waste, corruption, inflated contracts or poorly monitored programmes is a naira that cannot be spent twice.
That is especially important in a country where the government repeatedly says it does not have enough resources to meet social needs.
It is difficult to tell a working parent that there is no money for affordable childcare, better schools or social protection while failing to provide convincing answers about money that disappears elsewhere.
The issue is not whether Nigeria should spend more.
It is whether it can spend what it already has more intelligently.
A family policy should be built around working people
Nigeria does not need to reproduce Singapore’s programme.
It needs to develop a policy that recognises the particular pressures facing Nigerian families.
A modest child benefit could help poor and working households cope with the cost of raising children. A refundable tax credit could provide relief to parents whose incomes are too low to benefit substantially from ordinary tax deductions.
Affordable childcare would allow more parents to remain in employment. Better maternity protection and meaningful paternity leave would reduce the career and income shock that can accompany childbirth.
Public schools and primary healthcare would reduce the amount families have to spend privately.
School feeding would help children and relieve pressure on household food budgets.
Affordable housing and better transport would reduce two of the largest recurring costs facing urban families.
None of these measures needs to be presented as a favour to parents.
They are investments in the country’s productive capacity.
Nigeria’s demographic future makes this urgent
Singapore’s decision is partly a response to a very different demographic challenge. Its fertility rate has fallen to exceptionally low levels, and the government is trying to make family formation less economically daunting.
Nigeria faces almost the opposite situation. Its population is young and growing rapidly.
That should make investment in children even more important.
A large young population can be an enormous economic advantage if those children grow into healthy, educated and productive adults.
It can also become a profound burden if millions grow up without adequate education, healthcare, nutrition, skills or decent employment prospects.
Population alone does not produce prosperity.
People do.
And people require investment.
Parents cannot keep doing the impossible
There is a limit to how much more Nigerian families can absorb.
Parents cannot simultaneously compensate for failing electricity, inadequate schools, weak healthcare, poor transport, insecurity, expensive housing and unaffordable childcare while continuing to pay taxes and maintain the economy.
At some point, the household stops being resilient and simply becomes exhausted.
This is why Singapore’s announcement deserves attention in Nigeria.
Not because S$70,000 is the magic number.
Not because Singapore has discovered a formula that Nigeria can import.
It deserves attention because a government has looked at the cost of raising children and decided that families should not carry the entire burden themselves.
Nigeria should have that conversation too.
The country does not need to promise every child a fortune. It needs to decide what it is prepared to do for the millions of parents who are already working, paying taxes and raising the people who will inherit the country.
That could begin with a child benefit that reaches the families who need it, affordable childcare, decent public schools, functioning primary healthcare, better transport and housing, and a tax system that recognises some of the cost of raising children.
It should also begin with something less glamorous but perhaps more important: stopping the waste.
A country cannot keep telling its citizens that resources are scarce while public money is spent without sufficient scrutiny.
The Nigerian parent is not asking government to raise the children.
The parent is asking for a country in which raising them does not require a private substitute for almost every public service.
Singapore has put a monetary value on the support it is prepared to give its children.
Nigeria should put something equally concrete behind all its speeches about children being the future.
The future is already sitting in Nigerian homes. It is eating, going to school, falling ill, growing up and waiting to see what kind of country we leave behind.
