A new World Bank report has revealed that less than half of Nigeria’s social safety-net benefits reach poor citizens despite billions spent annually on welfare programmes.
According to the report titled The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria (November 2025), only 44% of total benefits from government-funded programmes go to poor Nigerians, while 56% of beneficiaries are not among the poorest.
The Bank attributed the shortfall to weak targeting, poor programme design, and limited coverage, noting that most schemes including the National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP) provide a flat payment per household instead of per person, leaving larger poor families with less support.
“Safety nets expenditure is inefficient, with a smaller share of benefits going to the poor,” the report stated.
Although the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) was commended for being better targeted, the Bank said its limited reach by covering only pupils in grades one to three reduces its overall impact.
Nigeria’s spending on social protection stands at just 0.14% of GDP, far below the global average of 1.5% and Sub-Saharan Africa’s 1.1%. Consequently, the combined impact of all programmes has reduced poverty by only 0.4 percentage points, with little effect on inequality.
The report warned that Nigeria’s reliance on donor funding which made up 60% of safety-net spending between 2015 and 2021 which threatens the sustainability of its welfare programmes.
“There is an urgent need for Nigeria to create fiscal space for sustainable social safety-net programming,” it said.
However, the World Bank praised the NASSP for producing tangible results.
Among its beneficiaries, poverty fell by 4.3 percentage points and the poverty gap by 4.2 points nearly ten times more than the impact of all other programmes combined.
With over 85 million Nigerians captured in the National Social Registry, the Bank said the platform provides a strong foundation for transparent and better-targeted social assistance if adequately scaled and funded.
