The World Bank report says that Nigeria’s social safety-net programmes are failing to reach those who need them the most.
In the new report titled “The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria”, the bank revealed that only 44 per cent of total benefits from government-funded safety-net schemes actually reach poor Nigerians.
The November 2025 report examines Nigeria’s spending on social safety nets, assessing their coverage and efficiency, and reveals how poor targeting, weak funding, and fragmented implementation have left millions of vulnerable citizens without meaningful relief despite the government’s lofty poverty-reduction promises.
It will be recalled that Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, recently announced that the Nigerian government is targeting 15 million households, covering some 70 million people via the digital cash-grant scheme.
He disclosed that about 8.5 million households have already received at least one tranche of the N25,000 payment, while the remaining 6.5 million households are expected to be paid before year-end.
But, the World Bank described Nigeria’s social safety-net spending as inefficient, saying a smaller portion of benefits goes to the poor despite their dominance among beneficiaries.
According to the World Bank, while about 56 per cent of the recipients of safety-net programmes are poor, they receive only 44 per cent of the total benefits. It explained that this imbalance stems from the way most programmes, including the National Social Safety Nets Programme, allocate a fixed amount per household rather than per person.
As a result, poor families, often larger in size, end up sharing limited benefits among more members. The report noted that initiatives such as the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, which focus on individuals rather than households, are less affected by this problem.
However, it added that the school feeding scheme currently targets only pupils in grades one to three and lacks full national coverage, restricting the number of children who can benefit.
“Safety nets expenditure is inefficient, with a smaller share of benefits going to the poor. While 56 per cent of the beneficiaries are poor, only 44 per cent of the total safety net benefits go to the poor. For each programme category, the share of benefits going to the poor is lower than the share of beneficiaries who are poor. This inefficiency arises because benefit levels for most programmes, including the NASSP cash transfer programme, are determined at the household level, but poor people tend to live in larger households.
“That is, even for well-targeted programmes, the same benefit amount is divided over a larger number of people living in poorer households. Programs such as the NHGSFP, which target individuals and not households, should be less affected by these issues. But NHGSFP only benefits children in grades 1 to 3, and does not yet have full coverage, which limits the number of children per household that can benefit from the program,” the report said.
GIK/APA