Despite billions of naira spent yearly to cushion hardship, a new World Bank report says 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”, obtained on Tuesday, 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.
Recently, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, announced that the federal 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.
Despite this, 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 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 programs, 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 declared.
According to the bank, Nigeria spends barely 0.14 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product on social protection, far below the global average of 1.5 per cent and the Sub-Saharan African average of 1.1 per cent. That tiny allocation, the report warns, has had “almost no impact” on poverty. The combined effect of all existing social protection programmes in the country has reduced the national poverty headcount by just 0.4 percentage points.
To put it simply, despite government claims of multiple intervention schemes, from conditional cash transfers to school feeding programmes, the needle on poverty has barely moved. The report blames the weak impact on poor design and benefit dilution.
While some programmes, like the National Social Safety Nets Programme, disburse a flat amount per household, poorer households are typically larger, meaning the money is stretched among more mouths.
For instance, a family of eight in a rural village and a family of three in a semi-urban area may receive the same transfer, even though the former faces deeper hardship.
Other schemes, like the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, which feeds primary school pupils, target individuals instead of households. Yet, they reach only children in grades one to three and cover a limited number of schools.
The World Bank also expressed concern over Nigeria’s heavy dependence on foreign donors to finance its social safety nets. Between 2015 and 2021, official development assistance accounted for about 60 per cent of federal spending on safety-net programmes, with the World Bank providing over 90 per cent of that support.
The report cautioned that this dependence puts Nigeria at risk of funding gaps whenever donor support declines. “There is an urgent need for Nigeria to find fiscal space for sustainable social safety-net programming,” the bank warned.
“At the existing level of social protection expenditure, there is almost no impact on the overall poverty headcount rate, gap, or depth. The impact on the poverty headcount rate of all social safety net expenditure combined is just 0.4 percentage points. The minimal impact is explained, first and foremost, by the low coverage of and low expenditures on safety net programmes.
“In addition, the inadequacy of benefit levels, particularly of the programs with the largest coverage, limits the ability of these programs to lift many out of poverty. Many programs implemented by the federal, state, and local levels, as well as safety net programs implemented by religious bodies, fail to reach the neediest. The low coverage, together with low benefit size and poor targeting, contribute to the negligible impacts of extant safety nets on the overall poverty headcount rate in Nigeria.
“It is, therefore, not surprising that the poverty impacts of safety net programs in Nigeria are much lower than in most other LMICs. The range of poverty impacts in Nigeria is even lower than the average among not just the LMICs, but also low-income countries with lower incomes and a higher extent of poverty.
“Likewise, the overall impact on inequality among the poor also remains low. The extant safety net programmes lower the poverty gap, the income needed to lift everyone to the poverty line (expressed as a percentage of the poverty line), by 0.2 percentage points and the overall depth of poverty by 0.15 percentage points.”
Furthermore, the bank stated that the poorest households in Nigeria are larger, which leads to the benefit being spread thinly among many family members. This further contributes to the negligible impacts on reducing inequality among the poor, as measured by the gap and severity of poverty.
“That being said, if well-targeted programmes are scaled up, then the poverty impacts can be significantly higher. For instance, the NASSP cash transfer programme has a much larger effect on poverty and inequality of its beneficiaries,” it stated.
The bank, however, acknowledged that the National Social Safety Nets Programme, which uses the National Social Registry to identify and reach poor households, has shown encouraging results.
Among its beneficiaries, the programme reduced poverty by 4.3 percentage points and the poverty gap by 4.2 percentage points, nearly 10 times more effective than the combined impact of all other social safety-net initiatives.
With more than 85 million individuals already captured in the NSR, the database, now the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa, offers what the bank calls “a ready-made platform” for more accurate and transparent delivery of social assistance.
(Punch)
