This political economy analysis asks why Nigeria’s ambitious green-jobs agenda has not yet translated into employment at scale, and what it would take politically to change that. It looks past the technical case for the transition to the incentives, institutions and power relations that actually govern whether policy is designed, funded and delivered. Its central finding is that the binding constraints are political and institutional rather than technical: a hydrocarbon-based political economy that rewards the protection of oil rents, an institutional landscape crowded with overlapping mandates and weak coordination, and a set of governance risks, from rent-seeking in procurement to the short horizons of the electoral cycle, that quietly shape which programmes get built and who benefits.

Nigeria faces acute climate vulnerabilities while grappling with high youth unemployment and the urgent need to diversify an oil-dependent economy. This synthesis draws on key informant interviews with stakeholders across government, civil society, the private sector and the informal economy, alongside a review of national policy and the research literature. Respondents recognised Nigeria’s policy frameworks, including the Nationally Determined Contributions and the net-zero pledge for 2060, but pointed consistently to a gap between policy intent and grassroots reality.

This study asks whether Nigeria’s low-carbon transition can be made to create green jobs, and finds that the obstacle is not ambition but integration. The country has assembled a comparatively strong architecture of energy and climate policy, yet energy, labour and education policy are not aligned, labour considerations sit at the margin of energy planning, and the institutions meant to coordinate the whole remain weak where it matters most. The transition is constrained less by what is on paper than by the machinery to deliver it.

Nigeria’s low-carbon transition is usually presented as an environmental obligation. This report treats it as something more practical: one of the country’s largest untapped sources of inclusive employment, on the condition that the transition is governed so that green investment is required to create jobs rather than merely permitted to. The distinction matters, because the evidence assembled here shows that the will and the awareness already exist, while the instruments that would convert investment into jobs do not.

Nigeria’s transition toward a low carbon economy presents a significant opportunity for private sector participation, green entrepreneurship and employment creation across renewable energy value chains. The central finding of this assessment is consistent with the wider evidence base: the binding constraints on renewable energy enterprise in Nigeria arise less from any absence of policy ambition than from implementation gaps, regulatory fragmentation, overlapping institutional mandates and procedural inefficiency that raise transaction costs and investment uncertainty

How can Nigeria ensure its green transition actually delivers the promised jobs? This report argues that Nigeria does not need to build an entirely new climate-specific digital state to advance labour-based green transitions. Instead, it can align existing DPI layers with climate and employment objectives through targeted reforms to data standards, public procurement, payments, registries, institutional coordination, and accountability mechanisms.

Unlocking Nigeria’s Green Remote Work Potential, proposes a comprehensive strategy to tackle Nigeria’s serious issues of high youth unemployment and the mass emigration of skilled professionals, often referred to as the “Japa” phenomenon. The document highlights a significant opportunity: the global demand for climate-aligned digital jobs, such as ESG reporting and carbon accounting, which can be done remotely.

The brief that proposes a structured, nationally tailored framework for defining, classifying, and monitoring green jobs across sectors

This policy brief advocates for subnational action in creating green jobs within the framework of Nigeria’s National Inclusive Green Jobs Act (NIGJA)

Built on nationwide surveys and RCT-based testing, the report examines the feasibility of Nigeria’s National Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill, with attention to digital governance readiness, electronic transactions, consumer protection, trust in digital platforms, and public service efficiency. It identifies gaps in infrastructure, low trust in digital systems, limited digital literacy, and weak adoption of e-government tools, and outlines evidence-based pathways to strengthen inclusive digital governance.