Only 44% of Nigeria’s safety nets reach poor people – W/Bank

The World Bank has expressed concerns over what it called the inefficiency of Nigeria’s social safety net programmes. It disclosed that despite more than half of the beneficiaries being poor, the majority of the country’s poor population are not getting the benefit. This was disclosed in its latest report titled “The State of Social Safety […]

The World Bank has expressed concerns over what it called the inefficiency of Nigeria’s social safety net programmes.

It disclosed that despite more than half of the beneficiaries being poor, the majority of the country’s poor population are not getting the benefit.

This was disclosed in its latest report titled “The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria”, where the multilateral financial institution disclosed that 56 per cent of beneficiaries of government safety net programmes are poor, yet only 44 per cent of the total benefits actually reach poor households.

Daily Trust reports that the federal government had bragged about the impact of the safety nets.

Recently, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Olawale Edun, disclosed that the federal government disbursed N330 billion in cash transfers to poor and vulnerable Nigerians through the National Social Safety-Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO).

“We are pleased to report that the social protection programme put in place as a safety net to help people cope with the rising price level is now firmly back on track,” the Minister had said.

He spoke on Wednesday in Abuja at a meeting of the Special Presidential Panel on the Social Investment Programme.

But according to the World Bank, there is a wide disparity in the number of beneficiaries, with more than half of those who need the safety nets not getting them.

The Bank stated that this represents a significant inequality in benefit distribution, suggesting that Nigeria’s current safety net architecture—though expansive in design—fails to adequately target and sustain its most vulnerable populations.

“While 56 per cent of the beneficiaries are poor, only 44 per cent of the total safety net benefits go to the poor. For each program category … the share of benefits going to the poor is lower than the share of beneficiaries that are poor,” the World Bank said.

The Bank explained that this inefficiency stems largely from the structure of benefit allocation, which, in most cases, is determined at the household level rather than on an individual basis.

This inefficiency arises because benefit levels for most programs, including the NASSP cash transfer program, are determined at the household level, but poor people tend to live in larger households. That is, even for well-targeted programs, the same benefit amount is divided over a larger number of people living in poorer households,” the report noted.

The World Bank pointed to the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) as an example of an initiative that targets individuals directly and could mitigate such inefficiencies.  

However, it noted that the NHGSFP’s limited scope—targeting only children in grades 1 to 3—restricts its impact.

“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, which limits the number of children per household that can benefit from the program,” the World Bank added.