The Nigerian Government and the World Bank have restructured the $500m HOPE for Quality Basic Education for All programme, cutting funding allocations tied to the construction of new classrooms, while expanding the number of states eligible for targeted interventions under the project.
According to the World Bank, the allocation for the creation of 13,000 new classrooms under the programme was significantly reduced following changes in grant financing from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).
The World Bank said that the restructuring was necessitated by a sharp reduction in Nigeria’s GPE System Transformation Grant allocation.
“These changes stem from a reduction in the total allocation for Nigeria’s GPE STG funding from $107.59m to $53.975m,” the World Bank report said.
The World Bank explained that the original arrangement had split the GPE funding between the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund, but the revised financing structure transferred the entire reduced grant allocation to the World Bank-managed HOPE-Education programme.
“Originally, co-grant agents, the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund, were selected to each manage half of the initial STG funding allocation. However, with the reduced GPE financing, the Government of Nigeria proposed that the reduced allocation be managed entirely by the World Bank through HOPE-Education,” it stated,
The programme, approved by the World Bank Board on March 31, 2025, is financed through a $500m International Development Association credit and a $52.18m GPE grant.
The restructuring paper showed that the total allocation under DLI 4, which covers “Number of new primary classrooms created through community participation,” was reduced from $5.7m to $2.55m.
Specifically, the allocation for government-community agreements to support classroom construction in 15 states was cut from $500,000 to $300,000, while the allocation for the construction of 13,000 classrooms dropped from $5.2m to $2.25m.
Despite the reduction in funding allocations, the overall programme target of creating 13,000 classrooms remained unchanged in the updated results framework contained in the report.
The World Bank said that there would be no change to the programme’s development objective, closing date, or institutional arrangements.
The report stated, “There are no changes to the Program Development Objective, closing date, or institutional arrangements. This is the first restructuring of the operation.”
Under the revised arrangement, the number of states eligible for targeted interventions under Results Area 1 was expanded from three to six with the addition of Abia, Bauchi and Kwara states.
The World Bank said the changes would also require modifications to the verification protocol for GPE-supported states, while the existing verification process for IDA-financed states would remain unchanged.
According to the report, the HOPE-Education programme aims “to improve foundational learning outcomes, increase access to basic education and enhance education systems in participating States.”
The report by Punch newspaper on Friday stated that the programme became effective on February 26, 2026, and the World Bank said that implementation was already making “early progress.”
GIK/APA