Despite billions of naira spent annually to ease hardship, a new World Bank report has revealed that Nigeria’s social safety-net programmes are failing to reach the poor effectively.
The report, titled “The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria” and released in November 2025, showed that just 44 per cent of total benefits from government-funded welfare schemes actually reach poor Nigerians.
The World Bank assessed Nigeria’s social safety-net spending, examining its coverage and efficiency. It found that weak targeting, limited funding, and fragmented implementation have prevented millions of vulnerable citizens from benefiting meaningfully, despite the government’s repeated promises to reduce poverty.
Recently, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, announced that the federal government is targeting 15 million households, representing around 70 million people, through its digital cash grant programme.
He explained that about 8.5 million households have already received at least one payment of the N25,000 cash grant, while another 6.5 million households are expected to receive theirs before the end of the year.
However, the World Bank described Nigeria’s social welfare spending as inefficient, noting that although about 56 per cent of beneficiaries are poor, they receive only 44 per cent of the total benefits. The report attributed this gap to the system of allocating a fixed amount per household instead of per person.
Because poor families tend to have more members, the same payment is divided among many people, reducing its impact. Programmes like the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, which target individuals rather than households, perform better in this regard but are limited in scope, currently covering only pupils in grades one to three.
The report stated: “Safety nets expenditure is inefficient, with a smaller share of benefits going to the poor. While 56 per cent of beneficiaries are poor, only 44 per cent of total safety net benefits go to the poor. This inefficiency arises because benefit levels for most programmes are determined at the household level, but poor people tend to live in larger households.”
The World Bank further disclosed that Nigeria spends only 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. The report warned that such low spending has had “almost no impact” on reducing poverty, cutting the national poverty rate by just 0.4 percentage points.
It noted that despite multiple social intervention schemes — such as cash transfers and school feeding programmes — the overall impact on poverty remains minimal due to weak design and diluted benefits.
For example, a poor rural family of eight and a smaller urban family of three may receive the same cash transfer, even though the larger family faces far greater hardship.
The World Bank also expressed concern about Nigeria’s heavy reliance on foreign donors to fund social safety nets. Between 2015 and 2021, about 60 per cent of federal social protection spending came from development partners, with the World Bank providing over 90 per cent of that support.
The report warned that such dependence could create funding gaps if donor assistance declines, urging Nigeria to “find fiscal space for sustainable social safety-net programming.”
It added that the current low coverage and inadequate benefit levels limit the capacity of these programmes to lift people out of poverty. “Many programmes implemented at federal, state, and local levels, as well as those run by religious bodies, fail to reach the most vulnerable,” it stated.
The report concluded that the poverty impact of Nigeria’s safety-net initiatives is lower than in most lower-middle-income and even low-income countries. It found that existing programmes reduce the poverty gap by just 0.2 percentage points and the depth of poverty by 0.15 percentage points.
According to the World Bank, poor households tend to be larger, meaning benefits are spread thinly, leading to negligible effects on inequality. However, it suggested that if well-targeted programmes like the National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP) were expanded, the impact on poverty could be much greater.
The report highlighted that the NASSP, which uses the National Social Registry to identify and reach poor households, has performed significantly better than others. Among its beneficiaries, the programme reduced poverty by 4.3 percentage points and the poverty gap by 4.2 percentage points — nearly ten times more effective than the combined results of other initiatives.
With over 85 million Nigerians already captured in the National Social Registry — the largest such database in Sub-Saharan Africa — the World Bank said it provides a “ready-made platform” for more accurate and transparent delivery of social assistance.
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