Abstract / Summary
Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for the first six months of life is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available to any state, yet Nigeria's EBF rate has remained obstinately low and largely stagnant for over a decade. This paper offers a sociological assessment of the relationship between democratic governance and the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding among nursing mothers in Nigeria. Drawing on the 2018 and 2023–24 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys, World Health Organization and UNICEF data, and civil-society and legal analyses of maternity protection, the paper situates Nigeria's breastfeeding crisis within the social determinants of health framework, structural functionalism, and institutional/governance theory. It argues that low exclusive breastfeeding rates in Nigeria are not simply a matter of maternal knowledge or individual choice but reflect a governance failure spanning weak labour-law enforcement, fragmented and sub-national maternity leave policy, underfunded primary healthcare and lactation support systems, and the absence of a coherent, adequately resourced national breastfeeding promotion architecture. According to the 2023–24 NDHS, only about 29 percent of Nigerian infants aged 0–5 months are exclusively breastfed, against a national policy target of 65 percent by 2025 and a WHO benchmark of 50 percent, while only a minority of Nigeria's 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory currently guarantee six months of paid maternity leave. The paper identifies the sociological mechanisms legislative fragmentation, weak workplace accountability, elite-urban policy capture, and gendered labour-market structures that mediate the governance-breastfeeding nexus, and concludes with recommendations anchored in legislative harmonisation, maternity protection enforcement, and community-based lactation support as pathways to improving infant and young child feeding outcomes in Nigeria.