Despite billions of naira spent annually on poverty alleviation, a new World Bank report shows that Nigeria’s social safety-net programs are largely failing to benefit those who need them most.
Titled “The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria” and obtained on Tuesday, the November 2025 report highlights inefficiencies in the country’s social protection system, noting that only 44 per cent of benefits from government-funded safety nets actually reach the poor, even though they account for 56 per cent of beneficiaries.
The report cites poor targeting, weak funding, and fragmented implementation as major factors leaving millions of vulnerable citizens without meaningful relief, despite government claims of poverty-reduction interventions.
Currently, the federal government aims to reach 15 million households—approximately 70 million people—through its digital cash-grant scheme. According to Finance Minister Wale Edun, 8.5 million households have already received at least one tranche of the N25,000 payment, with the remaining 6.5 million expected to be paid before year-end.
However, the World Bank warns that Nigeria’s social safety-net spending remains inefficient. Most programs, including the National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP), allocate a fixed amount per household rather than per person, meaning larger, poorer households share limited benefits among more members. In contrast, initiatives such as the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), which targets individual pupils rather than households, are less affected by this issue—but currently only cover children in grades one to three and lack full national reach.
“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 reach them… 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,” the report stated.
The report further highlighted that Nigeria spends just 0.14 per cent of its GDP on social protection, far below the global average of 1.5 per cent and the Sub-Saharan African average of 1.1 per cent. Consequently, the combined impact of all social protection programs has reduced the national poverty headcount by only 0.4 percentage points.
Other challenges identified include dependence on foreign donors—official development assistance accounted for around 60 per cent of federal social safety-net spending between 2015 and 2021, with over 90 per cent of that support coming from the World Bank. This reliance, the report warns, exposes Nigeria to funding gaps if donor support declines.
The World Bank emphasizes that poorly designed programs, low benefit amounts, and weak targeting limit the ability of social safety nets to reduce poverty and inequality. For example, while the NASSP cash transfer program has shown promising results, most other initiatives have minimal impact due to fixed household payments being stretched across larger, poorer families.
Encouragingly, the report notes that the NASSP, which uses the National Social Registry (NSR) to identify poor households, has reduced poverty among its beneficiaries by 4.3 percentage points and the poverty gap by 4.2 percentage points, nearly ten times more effective than the combined impact of other programs. With over 85 million individuals already captured in the NSR, the database offers “a ready-made platform” for more accurate, transparent, and scalable social assistance delivery.
The report concludes that well-targeted, scaled-up programs could significantly increase the impact of social safety nets in reducing poverty and inequality, if paired with sustainable funding and improved coverage.