By Charles Pemu 
ABUJA—Despite billions of Naira spent annually on intervention schemes, Nigeria’s social safety-net programmes are largely failing to reach the country’s most vulnerable citizens, according to a stark new report from the World Bank.
The November 2025 report, titled “The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria,” revealed that only 44 percent of the total benefits from government-funded schemes actually reach poor Nigerians. This inefficiency is blamed on poor targeting, weak funding, and fragmented implementation, which has left millions without meaningful relief.
The World Bank described Nigeria’s social safety-net spending as highly inefficient. While a majority of the recipients (56 percent) are poor, they receive a disproportionately smaller share of the total benefits (44 percent).
This imbalance, the report explains, stems from the design flaw in most programmes, including the high-profile National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP), where transfers are allocated as a fixed amount per household rather than per person.
Since poorer households are typically much larger, the benefits are severely diluted among more members. For instance, a small, semi-urban family may receive the same cash transfer as a large rural family facing deeper hardship, rendering the aid inadequate for those who need it most.
The report delivered a damning assessment of the overall impact of all existing social protection programmes, stating that they have had “almost no impact” on national poverty.
Nigeria spends barely 0.14 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on social protection, far below the global average of 1.5 percent and the Sub-Saharan African average of 1.1 percent.
The combined effect of all programmes has reduced the national poverty headcount by a minimal 0.4 percentage points.
The minimal impact is primarily due to the low coverage, low benefit sizes, and the poor targeting that results in “benefit dilution.”
Dependence on Foreign Donors
The Bank also raised concerns over the country’s heavy financial reliance on foreign partners. Between 2015 and 2021, Official Development Assistance (ODA) accounted for about 60 percent of federal spending on safety-net programmes, with the World Bank alone providing over 90 percent of that support.
The report warned that this severe dependence puts Nigeria at high risk of significant funding gaps whenever donor support declines, underscoring the urgent need for Nigeria to find fiscal space for sustainable social safety-net programming.
Despite the overall bleak picture, the World Bank acknowledged the encouraging results of the National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP), which uses the National Social Registry (NSR) to identify and reach poor households.
Among its direct beneficiaries, the NASSP cash transfer programme reduced poverty by 4.3 percentage points, nearly ten times more effective than the combined impact of all other social safety-net initiatives. With over 85 million individuals already captured, the NSR database provides a transparent and ready-made platform for more accurate and effective assistance delivery, should the government choose to scale up and reform its benefit allocation structure.
The findings come even as the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, recently announced that the Federal Government is currently targeting 15 million households (some 70 million people) via the digital cash-grant scheme, with about 8.5 million having already received the N25,000 payment.