Nigeria is ranked among the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, yet the majority of its 36 states have no dedicated climate policy, no climate budget, and no system for tracking whether anything is being done at all. A landmark 2024 report has just put numbers to that failure — and the results demand urgent attention.
This article is ASE’s independent review of the findings of the Society for Planet and Prosperity’s 2024 Climate Governance Performance Ranking. We report what the ranking found, but the interpretation, the gaps we flag, and the call to action that follows are our own — not SPP’s.
Key findings
- Only 3 of 36 states (Lagos, Abia, and Kwara) have a working system for monitoring, evaluation, and reporting on their climate programmes.
- No Nigerian state has issued a green bond. Only Gombe has budgeted for one, and it has not yet been implemented.
- Just 2 states (Enugu and Taraba) have a Commissioner post that explicitly names climate change.
- 24 states have functional government websites with no reference to climate change at all.
- Lagos ranks first overall with 182 out of 325 points; Zamfara ranks last with 35.
- The CGPR’s own survey pool was 80% male (37 of 46 respondents), reflecting a gender gap the report itself does not address.
Source: Society for Planet and Prosperity, Climate Governance Performance Ranking of the 36 States of Nigeria (2024). Chart shows CGPR composite scores; data collected April–July 2024.
This report was developed by the Society for Planet and Prosperity (SPP) in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change (DCC), Federal Ministry of Environment (FMoE). It produced the first-ever Climate Governance Performance Ranking (CGPR) of all 36 Nigerian states, measuring each state across five criteria: climate institutions and governance, climate policy and action plans, climate change project implementation and monitoring, climate budget and finance, and online visibility. The findings are alarming but also instructive about what is possible when states decide to act.
Source report: Climate Governance Performance Ranking of the 36 States of Nigeria (2024), Society for Planet and Prosperity
Background and Purpose
Nigeria faces a climate crisis it did not cause. Despite contributing minimally to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the country is acutely vulnerable to climate impacts due to its complex agroecological zones, rapidly growing urban and rural populations, extensive coastlines threatened by sea-level rise, and weak governance systems. Climate change is already affecting health, food security, livelihoods, and economic development across the country.
The Nigerian federal government has made significant commitments — including a net zero emissions target by 2060 and Updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted under the Paris Agreement. Federal-level frameworks include the Climate Change Act, the Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS), and a National Climate Change Policy, among others.
However, as a federating state, most policies and Acts of the National Assembly are not binding on individual states. The environment, including climate change, falls under the concurrent legislative list, meaning each state must enact its own policies and action plans to guide climate action at the state, local, and community levels. Yet this critical layer of governance has been largely overlooked.
The CGPR was designed precisely to address this gap: to create an evidence base, recognise strong performers, spotlight gaps, and ultimately push states to take subnational climate governance seriously.
Key Pillars and Priority Areas
The CGPR assessed states across five interconnected governance themes.
Climate Institutions and Governance examines whether states have the administrative infrastructure to lead on climate: a dedicated commissioner, a climate change directorate or unit, an inter-ministerial committee on climate change, climate change focal persons at the local government level, regular climate conferences, and advisory boards involving civil society and the private sector.
Climate Policy and Action Plans looks at whether states have enacted their own climate change policies and action plans and whether those documents set emissions reduction targets aligned with Nigeria’s national commitments to the Paris Agreement and the country’s net zero goal.
Climate Change Project Implementation and Monitoring assesses the actual on-the-ground delivery of climate projects, ranging from solar street lights and clean cookstoves to climate-smart agriculture and compressed natural gas (CNG) bus distribution. It also examines whether states have active systems for monitoring, evaluation and reporting (MER) of climate impacts.
Climate Budget and Finance evaluates whether states are allocating dedicated funds to climate action in their annual budgets, whether climate projects are explicitly tagged as such, and whether any state has issued a green bond as an innovative climate finance instrument.
Online Visibility and Public Communication looks at how well states publicise their climate work, including whether their Ministry of Environment maintains an active, updated website, publishes climate-related documents and reports, and uses social media to communicate climate action and engage citizens.
These five pillars reflect internationally recognised criteria for measuring subnational climate governance quality. Together they paint a picture not just of what states are saying about climate change, but what they are actually doing.
What stands out to us in this framework is how much weight it places on visibility, not just capacity. A state can quietly do reasonable work and still score poorly if no one can see it — and, as the Gaps section below shows, most states fail on exactly that count.
Methodology and Limitations
Data for the CGPR was collected directly from state ministries of environment between April and July 2024. Responses were independently verified through document checks and follow-up communication with state officials, rather than relying solely on self-reporting. This is the first edition of the ranking, so it establishes a baseline rather than a year-on-year trend.
Two figures in this article could not be fully reconciled against the totals reported elsewhere in the source data and should be verified against the full CGPR report before being cited or republished:
The breakdown of institutional structures (fourteen states with a full Directorate of Climate Change, sixteen with only a Climate Change Unit, and four with neither) totals 34 of the 36 states rather than all 36. It is unclear from the data provided whether two states were not classified, or whether a category was omitted.
Delta is named among the five states with both a climate policy and an action plan in place, but does not appear among the ten highest-scoring states overall. This is plausible given the CGPR’s composite scoring across five pillars, but is flagged here for verification.
Institutional Arrangements
The CGPR found significant variation in how states have structured their climate governance institutions — and most structures are inadequate.
Only two states — Enugu and Taraba — have a Commissioner with climate change explicitly named in their title. Fourteen states have a full Directorate of Climate Change within their Ministry of Environment, while sixteen states have only a Climate Change Unit. Four states have neither a directorate nor a unit, relying solely on a climate desk officer.
Only eleven states have an Office of the Senior Special Adviser or Special Assistant on Climate Change attached to the executive governor. Just ten states have climate change focal persons at the local government level, meaning that in twenty-six states, climate governance stops at the state capital and never reaches communities.
Only eight states hold regular climate change conferences, and only eleven states have an inter-ministerial committee on climate change that meets regularly — meaning most states have no formal mechanism for coordinating climate action across different government ministries.
At the legislative level, only three states — Imo, Ebonyi, and Plateau — have dedicated Standing Committees on Climate Change in their Houses of Assembly. In thirty-two states, climate issues are handled by the general House Committee on Environment. Adamawa has no committee at all.
The federal government body overseeing this work is the Department of Climate Change under the Federal Ministry of Environment, which collaborated directly with SPP on this project.
To us, the more revealing numbers here aren’t the headline pillar scores but the reach ones: eleven states without a senior climate adviser to the governor, and twenty-six without anyone tasked with climate at the local government level. That is the gap between a policy existing on paper in the state capital and a policy that ever reaches a community.
Targets and Commitments
The CGPR does not prescribe specific emissions targets for individual states. However, one of its five scored pillars directly assesses whether states have set emissions reduction targets in their climate policies and action plans targets that would contribute to Nigeria’s national commitment to net zero by 2060 and the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal.
The findings here are stark: only five states — Lagos, Ebonyi, Borno, Delta, and Niger — have both a climate change policy and an action plan in place. Nine states have an action plan only, and two states have a policy only. Fifteen states are still developing their policies and action plans. Five states — Kogi, Ondo, Kebbi, Jigawa, and Zamfara — have neither and are not currently developing any.
On climate finance, no state had issued a green bond as of the data collection period (April–July 2024) — see Financing Limitations below for detail.
What jumps out to us here is less the gap between top and bottom than the five states that have committed to nothing at all. Fifteen states “still developing” a plan is a snapshot of work in progress; five states with neither a policy nor an action plan, and no plan to write one, is a choice.
Overall Rankings: Who Is Leading and Who Is Failing
The rankings reveal a steep drop-off from the top to the bottom.
Top Performers
| Rank | State | Score (out of 325) | Rating |
| 1st | Lagos | 182 | Outstanding |
| 2nd | Gombe | 128 | High |
| 3rd | Ebonyi | 125 | High |
| 4th | Borno | 115 | Good |
| 4th | Ekiti | 115 | Good |
| 6th | Edo | 112 | Good |
| 6th | Niger | 112 | Good |
| 8th | Abia | 106 | Good |
| 9th | Ogun | 104 | Good |
| 10th | Kwara | 103 | Good |
Table 1. Top 10 states, CGPR 2024. Source: Society for Planet and Prosperity, Climate Governance Performance Ranking of the 36 States of Nigeria (2024).
Bottom Performers
| Rank | State | Score | Rating |
| 27th | Benue | 60 | Low |
| 27th | Plateau | 60 | Low |
| 29th | Rivers | 59 | Low |
| 30th | Osun | 57 | Low |
| 31st | Kebbi | 56 | Low |
| 32nd | Nasarawa | 53 | Low |
| 33rd | Jigawa | 52 | Low |
| 34th | Oyo | 46 | Low |
| 35th | Kano | 45 | Low |
| 36th | Zamfara | 35 | Low |
Table 2. Bottom 10 states, CGPR 2024. Source: Society for Planet and Prosperity, Climate Governance Performance Ranking of the 36 States of Nigeria (2024).
Lagos is the only state rated Outstanding, scoring 182 out of a possible 325 points. Gombe and Ebonyi are rated High. States in positions 15 to 22 — including Adamawa, Kaduna, Sokoto, Enugu, Taraba, Kogi, Bauchi, and Ondo — are rated Average. The fourteen states at the bottom, from Cross-River to Zamfara, are rated Low with Zamfara scoring just 35 points.
Reading this table, what concerns us most isn’t the distance between Lagos and Zamfara — a spread like that is normal in any composite ranking. It’s that fourteen states, more than a third of the country, sit in the same bottom bracket. That’s not a handful of laggards; it’s a structural pattern that should worry anyone thinking about climate governance at the national level.
Implementation Strategy
The CGPR frames its implementation vision around a Template for Effective Climate Governance at the Subnational Level (Appendix I of the report), which provides a comprehensive framework covering twelve themes: vision and objectives, political will, institutional arrangements, policy framework, legal and regulatory framework, climate action plan implementation, financial mechanisms, stakeholder engagement, training and capacity building, monitoring and evaluation, communication and awareness, and integration with national and global efforts.
On financing, the report acknowledges that climate finance is a critical enabler of climate action, encompassing multilateral grants and concessional loans, private sector investment, and carbon pricing mechanisms such as emissions trading schemes. It calls on state governments to deploy green budgeting — aligning budgetary policymaking with climate and environmental commitments.
To some degree, all 36 states capture climate or climate-related projects in their budgets. However, only 21 states specifically tagged the allocated projects as climate change projects. This means that in fifteen states, climate spending is invisible within the budget — making it impossible to track, scale, or evaluate.
The project also identifies partnerships as central to implementation, with the SPP itself collaborating with the DCC, the Federal Ministry of Environment, and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) to build the evidence base and drive subnational climate awareness.
One question the CGPR’s implementation vision doesn’t answer, in our view: what happens to a state that simply ignores the template? A comprehensive framework is only as useful as the incentive states have to adopt it, and reputational pressure from a ranking can only do so much on its own.
Strengths of the Report
The CGPR represents a significant contribution to Nigeria’s climate governance landscape for several reasons.
It is the first comprehensive, independently validated, single ranking of subnational climate governance across all 36 Nigerian states — filling a critical evidence gap that has long hampered accountability.
The methodology is rigorous and multi-sourced: responses from state ministries were independently verified and validated through document checks and follow-up communication, reducing the risk of self-reporting bias.
The five-pillar framework is internationally aligned, drawing on recognised criteria for measuring subnational climate governance quality. It goes beyond policy existence to assess implementation, monitoring, finance, and public visibility — a more complete picture than most comparable exercises.
The ranking system creates healthy competitive incentives. By publicly recognising top performers and naming those at the bottom, the CGPR creates reputational stakes that can motivate improvement particularly as successive editions of the ranking are produced.
Finally, the inclusion of a Subnational Climate Governance Template in the appendix provides a practical, actionable tool for states seeking to improve their scores. It translates abstract governance principles into concrete steps any state can follow.
Gaps and Opportunities
Implementation and Coordination Gaps
The most striking finding of the report is the vast gap between policy intent and actual delivery. Only three states — Lagos, Abia, and Kwara — have an active system for monitoring, evaluation and reporting (MER) of climate impacts. The remaining thirty-three states have no structured way of knowing whether their climate programmes are working. Without MER, climate governance becomes performative rather than functional.
Financing Limitations
No Nigerian state has issued a green bond. Only Gombe indicated a provision in its 2024 budget, and even this has not been implemented. This represents a missed opportunity for states to access climate finance markets and signal serious commitment to green investment. The federal government issued Nigeria’s sovereign green bond in 2017 — the first in Africa — yet this model has not been replicated at the subnational level in the seven years since.
Online Visibility and Public Communication
Twenty-four states have functional websites with no reference to climate change at all. Only nine states have dynamic, regularly updated climate-related content on their ministry websites. This is not just a communications failure — it reflects a deeper problem of transparency and public accountability. Citizens cannot hold governments to account on climate action they cannot see.
Youth Exclusion
The report does not explicitly address youth engagement, and this is a significant gap. Young Nigerians are disproportionately exposed to climate risks — they will live through the consequences of today’s governance failures for decades. Yet they are absent from the institutional structures described in the CGPR. There is no mention of youth councils, youth climate advisers, or formal mechanisms for young people to participate in state-level climate decision-making. This is an opportunity waiting to be seized. Youth-led monitoring of state climate performance, youth representation on advisory boards, and state-level youth climate councils could all strengthen the accountability architecture the CGPR is trying to build.
The Gender Gap
Similarly, the report does not address gender — and the CGPR’s own survey respondents reflect this structural invisibility: of the 46 officials who completed the survey, only 9 (19.6%) were women. This matters because women and girls in Nigeria carry a disproportionate burden of climate impacts — collecting water, managing food production, and caring for family members during floods and droughts. No state is assessed on whether its climate governance includes gender-responsive planning, women’s representation in climate institutions, or targeted adaptation support for women. This is a gap the next edition of the CGPR should address directly.
Concluding Statement
The 2024 Climate Governance Performance Ranking of Nigeria’s 36 States exposes a governance deficit that is as urgent as it is avoidable: most Nigerian states have the institutional capacity to act on climate change, but have not yet chosen to build it. Lagos shows what is possible at the top; Zamfara’s score of 35 out of 325 shows how much ground remains to be covered. The CGPR is a critical accountability tool — but rankings alone will not move states. What is needed now is political will, youth and gender inclusion, dedicated climate financing, and a public that demands more from its state governments.
What Can You Do?
Climate governance is not something that happens in Abuja alone. It starts in your state — and it starts with you.
- Follow the CGPR rankings and share them with your community.
- Write to your state’s Ministry of Environment to ask whether your state has a climate action plan, and if not, why not.
- Advocate for youth representation on state climate advisory boards.
- Support organisations, like SPP and ASE, doing the work of holding governments accountable.
Author’s Bio
Ukachi Chidalu Alexandria is a public health student of Federal University of Technology Owerri with a specialisation in health systems and environmental health. Her work sits at the intersection of climate change, population health, and data: fields she believes are inseparable in the African context. She volunteers with the Alliance for Sustainability Education and writes to make climate science and policy legible to the next generation of African advocates and decision-makers.
