Stories of change in Nigeria

Before the recovery project reached Ngwom, survival was improvised. To get by, children gathered firewood and charcoal to sell, while women took in laundry and domestic work for wealthier households. Food was borrowed, and some days it was skipped.

Cash and livelihood support changed the footing. Families started small businesses and put their children back in school. A nutritional porridge for young children cut the common illnesses and breastfeeding mothers received care.

The social-cohesion side did something quieter but no less important, resetting relationships in a community that had known enmity, so that people began to share food and back each other's trades again.

A graduate who had not found work in seven years, Hauwa Ibrahim was also carrying the weight of a marriage that ended after nine months. She'd begun to withdraw from her community, expecting judgement rather than support and read stories of others who'd come through hard times as a way to cope.

Through a women's organisation she joined the project and took the briquette and recycling class, learning to turn discarded materials into something useful.

What started as a new skill became an enterprise: she now runs a sachet-water business and even makes shoes and bags from recycled water sachets. The income is hers. She buys for her daughter and makes her shoes, no longer waiting on anyone's permission or help.

A lifelong farmer in Kura had the passion but not the yields; poor harvests were discouraging and a season's farming could swallow around 100,000 naira. Climate-smart methods were not part of the picture.

The project taught modern practices, making manure and pesticide, planting maize and soybean together on the same plot and provided quality inputs and mentors who checked in. 

The training was inclusive; a farmer with a disability was among those selected. Costs fell to roughly 60,000 to 70,000 naira as soil quality improved and harvests rose. The change was visible enough that neighbouring farmers began asking what had been done differently.

For Kano's market traders, tax had long felt like one-way extraction. When officials arrived to enforce, tempers flared and traders simply locked up their shops - people could not see what their money was being used for.

Through the Tax Justice work, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) introduced a tax-for-service Charter of Demand. Traders, market leaders and civil society set out the services they wanted in return for compliance and local government chairmen put their signatures to it. Three of four charters were signed and the result was the construction of 48 shops along with drainage. Tax had begun to buy something people could see.

The same work reset the everyday relationship with tax authorities. A grievance mechanism, reachable by phone and social media, now answers complaints and traders who began to learn their rights as taxpayers.