Nigeria is preparing to take full control of humanitarian coordination from the United Nations, in a shift that is due to take effect at the very start of 2027. The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr Bernard Doro, said the country would assume that responsibility from the first of January 2027, describing it as the point at which the federal government, rather than the United Nations, would sit at the centre of how humanitarian assistance inside the country is organised, funded and directed in the years ahead.
At the heart of the change is a plan to move Nigeria's humanitarian response away from a model driven largely by outside donors and towards one that is nationally owned and locally led. In practice, that means the design, financing and delivery of humanitarian programmes would be steered primarily by Nigerian institutions and communities, rather than being shaped mainly by the priorities and resources of international partners, as has largely been the pattern until now across much of the aid sector.
The minister set out the plan at a joint humanitarian transition workshop held in Abuja, an event convened specifically to map out how the handover from the United Nations to the Nigerian authorities should be managed. The gathering was framed as a working session on the practical steps of that transition, bringing together the actors who will be expected to carry the new system once the coordinating role formally passes from the world body to the government of Nigeria.
The workshop was organised on a joint basis, with the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning listed among its co-conveners alongside a representative of the United Nations system. That pairing underlined the intention to tie the humanitarian transition closely to the government's wider budgeting and planning machinery, so that the responsibility for coordination is matched by the domestic financial and institutional structures that would be needed to sustain the response over the long term.
Beyond the government and the United Nations, the transition is being cast as a broad-based effort. Representatives of the private sector, philanthropists and civil society organisations were also expected to take part in the process, reflecting an approach in which humanitarian support is drawn from a wider range of domestic sources rather than resting on international funding alone. That mix of partners is presented as central to making a nationally owned and locally led system workable once it is in place.
The change is set to take effect from the first day of 2027, giving the authorities and their partners a period to prepare before the new arrangement formally begins. By taking over the coordinating function that has until now been anchored in the United Nations, Nigeria would move to a position in which decisions about how humanitarian needs are assessed and met are led from within the country, marking a significant shift in the way one of the world's most populous nations manages its response to crises.