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 ₦25,000 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.
The PUNCH