The paper is an exploratory study that seeks to find the reason‘s’ why the Nigerian state can be deemed a social democracy. This way, the variables of social inequality and social justice are parameters used to gauge the social democratic ethic of the Nigerian state. To this, five policies were interrogated to find if they conform to the social democratic etiquette of reducing social inequality and fostering forward social justice. The NHIS (National health insurance scheme), Sure-P, N-power, the minimum wage saga, and fuel subsidy regime, were looked into. This is justified due to the existence of scant literature about Nigerian social democracy in its existence since independence. The findings show that indeed the policies under review have enhanced the social wellbeing of the Nigerian citizen, as without them Nigerians will come out worse off. This way, answering the research question that “is Nigeria a social democracy?” By the way, also testing hypothesis, and confirming the initial hypothesis that “Nigeria is a social democracy in view of its social welfare policies” and debunking the later that claimed this hypothesis not to be true. Interconnected with this, hence on giving a pass mark for the Nigerian state as a social democracy, even if “partially”, because of the nature of administrations and the parties they belong to especially before and since 1999. Thus, the paper starts with an introduction, then a conceptual clarification, then a discussion on methodology, test of hypothesis using empirical research based on predominantly secondary data and finally concludes and recommends. The paper hints at possible areas of future research which have to do with conducting in depth analysis of the Social democratic party of Nigeria as it existed in the 1990s and its current formulation in Nigerian politics. Other areas of research the paper hints at is that which will be hinged on the Buhari regime, from 2015-2022. Also the Kaduna state government’s social intervention in the same time period. And finally other social welfare policies that were mentioned in the paper but were not discussed or used as empirical evidence of Nigerian social democracy.

Keywords: Social justice, Social Inequality, Welfare, Social Democracy.