Applications · Nigeria

What Nigeria's public documents show about climate implementation

Name: Climate Action Index — Nigeria subnational evidence, FY2025
Creator: Climate Action Index
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

CAI looked at all 36 Nigerian states and the Federal Capital Territory, and asked the same 10 questions about each one: questions about climate policy and the authority behind it, about public spending and how it is accounted for, and about the results governments report.

Where a document could not be found, that is reported as a gap in the public record — not as evidence that nothing is being done.

Explore the Nigerian Subnational Atlas

Nothing found
Faint signal
Visible, incomplete
Fully documented

Select any state or the FCT to open it in the Atlas. Colour shows how much of the public record was found — not how well a government is performing.

To answer them, CAI searched publicly available documents — official strategies, laws, budget books, audit reports, agency publications and press releases — and kept the web address of every document used, so any reader can open the same source. CAI also read through published fiscal documents and reviewed 2,463 climate-relevant budget and expenditure line items. This application shows what can be independently seen in public documents; it does not rank states.

Key findings from the Climate Action Index Nigeria application

We examined 10 implementation questions across Nigeria's 36 states and the FCT, producing 370 jurisdiction-level observations — one answer for each state and each question. The five findings below describe what those public documents contain.

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Finding 01

Institutional structures and fiscal documents are easier to find than legal authority and measured results.

Public documents often identify an agency or office responsible for climate work and provide some budget or expenditure information. They much less often show the legal authority behind that work or publish measured results that can be independently checked.

Where the public record reached CAI’s evidence threshold

Each bar counts jurisdictions, out of 37 (36 states plus the FCT), where the public documents searched contained the stated item. It counts what is published, not what has been carried out.

An institution responsible for climate work is named32 of 37 jurisdictions
A climate policy or strategy document is published14 of 37 jurisdictions
A law or legal order giving authority for climate action is published4 of 37 jurisdictions

Coloured: jurisdictions where the item was found. Pale: jurisdictions where it was not found in the documents searched.

Finding 02

Published fiscal records rarely identify climate spending clearly enough to total it confidently.

Across the fiscal analysis, CAI reviewed 2,463 line-item records. Of these, 1,122 were assessed for whether the climate purpose was visible in the line text. Only 299 of those lines — 27% — stated that purpose clearly.

Of 1,122 line items tested, how many state the climate purpose in the line itself?

Line text states the climate purpose: 299 lines (27%)
Purpose has to be interpreted from elsewhere: 823 lines (73%)

This test covers the line-item subset drawn from published budget documents CAI could read — one part of the 2,463 records reviewed. The fiscal line-item sets answer different questions and should not be added together.

Finding 03

State climate activity appears across multiple sectors.

Public records contain climate-relevant activity in renewable energy and electricity, waste and pollution control, climate governance, flood and erosion management, forestry and land restoration, water and resilient agriculture.

Sectors found in the climate-relevant fiscal records

Renewable energy / electricity
Waste / pollution / methane
Climate governance / cross-cutting
Flood / erosion / drainage
Forestry / land restoration
Water / resilient agriculture

A list of the sectors present in the records, not a measure of how much was spent in each.

Finding 04

Projects are described more often than their results are measured.

Public records frequently describe projects, locations, contract awards or beneficiaries. Across 148 jurisdiction-level checks covering emissions, beneficiaries, priority groups and target achievement, none contained all the evidence CAI required to establish the result from public documents alone.

0 of 148 outcome checks met the full public-evidence threshold.

0of 148 checks

Four outcome questions — emissions reduced, people helped, priority groups reached, targets met — checked for each of the 37 jurisdictions. Every square is one check; none was filled.

This does not mean no outcomes occurred; the public documents did not provide the complete measurement needed to establish them independently.

Finding 05

Public audit records rarely show whether climate-spending issues were resolved.

Where audited accounts or Auditor-General reports were available, they rarely connected a specific climate expenditure to an audit finding, the government's response and evidence that the issue was resolved.

What CAI looked for in audit documents

An audit finding on a specific climate expenditure
The government's response to that finding
Evidence that the issue was resolved

The three steps CAI searched for. This illustration shows what was looked for, not how often each step was found.

Read the record state by state

The Atlas opens the same documents state by state: what public records show about policy, spending and outcomes, and where the public record stops.

Explore the Nigerian Subnational Atlas