Only 44% of social benefits reach poor Nigerians – World Bank

Despite billions spent annually on welfare schemes, a new World Bank report has revealed that less than half of Nigeria’s social safety-net benefits reach the poor.

In its latest publication, The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria (November 2025), the World Bank found that only 44% of total benefits from government-funded programmes go to poor Nigerians, while 56% of recipients are poor.

The gap, it said, reflects poor programme design, weak targeting, and limited coverage.

“Safety nets expenditure is inefficient, with a smaller share of benefits going to the poor,” the report stated.

It explained that most programmes, including the National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP), allocate a flat amount per household rather than per person, meaning larger poor families share smaller benefits.

The World Bank noted that while initiatives such as the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) are better targeted at individuals, their limited coverage — only pupils in grades 1 to 3 — restricts their impact.

The report also highlighted that Nigeria spends just 0.14% of its GDP on social protection — far below the global average of 1.5% and Sub-Saharan Africa’s 1.1%.

As a result, the combined effect of all existing programmes has reduced poverty by only 0.4 percentage points, with negligible impact on inequality.

Despite ongoing efforts, including the federal government’s digital cash-grant scheme targeting 15 million households, the World Bank described Nigeria’s social spending as “inefficient and unsustainable.”

It also warned that the country’s heavy dependence on donor funding — which accounted for 60% of safety-net spending between 2015 and 2021 — poses a risk of future funding gaps.

“There is an urgent need for Nigeria to find fiscal space for sustainable social safety-net programming,” the bank cautioned.

However, the World Bank praised the NASSP for achieving stronger results.

Among its beneficiaries, poverty fell by 4.3 percentage points and the poverty gap by 4.2 points — nearly ten times higher than the impact of all other programmes combined.

With more than 85 million individuals captured in the National Social Registry, the bank said the platform offers a “ready-made foundation” for transparent and better-targeted social assistance, if properly scaled up and funded.