World Bank has said the Federal Government’s economic shock-response cash transfer programme reached 67.19 million Nigerians and 10.44 million households as of August 2026.
The disclosure was contained in the latest Implementation Status and Results Report on the National Social Safety Net Programme-Scale Up published on its website on Monday September 21.
The World Bank said more than 7.1 million households had received all three tranches of the cash transfer after completing biometric verification using their National Identification Numbers (NINs) or Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs).
According to the report, the number of people covered by cash-based interventions increased from 60.09 million in May to 67.19 million in August, exceeding the programme’s June 2027 target of 56 million.
Women accounted for 39.77 million of those covered, while 12.32 million were youths.
The report said women made up 57.6 per cent of primary beneficiaries, exceeding the programme’s target of 45 per cent. It added that 81 per cent of beneficiary households were within the bottom six income deciles.
The World Bank said 12.9 million households had been visited as part of the verification exercise, while more than 15.8 million NINs had been verified in the social registry.
It added that 10.95 million households had been verified using NINs and BVNs and integrated into the National Benefit Delivery Management System. The report said 98.9 per cent of beneficiary households received their transfers within 10 days of the scheduled payment date, while beneficiary satisfaction stood at 87.7 per cent. It added that all transfers were being paid directly into beneficiary-owned digital accounts supported by biometric identification.
The World Bank, however, retained the programme’s overall risk rating as “substantial,” citing political and governance, macroeconomic, technical-design and fiduciary risks.
It also said the modernised social registry was not yet operational as of August 2026, although it was expected to become operational by June 2027.
On financing, the World Bank said the programme’s $800 million International Development Association facility had been revised to $776.42 million, with $762.43 million, representing 98.2 per cent, already disbursed.
The report is released amidst the public outcry over the exact number of households and the actual beneficiaries of the federal government’s cash transfer to cushion the effect of economic hardship.
Recall that the federal government in July 2026 announced it spends N600 billion on cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians and reached about 10 million households under President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Although Federal Government’s cash-transfer programme had come under scrutiny after the Auditor-General for the Federation in a report in August raised concerns over the inability of auditors to verify that ₦33.751 billion transferred to more than 3.29 million households in 2023 reached genuine beneficiaries.
According to the report, electronic transfers totalling ₦33.751 billion were made to 3,295,207 households and beneficiaries selected from the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states.
However, auditors said they were unable to establish from the available records whether the payments actually reached the intended beneficiaries.
The findings renewed questions about transparency and accountability in the management of public funds allocated to poverty reduction, particularly amid conflicting figures released by government on the number of households reached by its cash-transfer interventions.
However, the recent world bank report has further excerbated arguments about the actual beneficiaries of the scheme and the number of households covered within the period under review.
The latest world bank finding therefore aims to diffuse renewed pressure on the Federal Government to provide detailed evidence of its poverty-reduction expenditure and demonstrate that funds budgeted for vulnerable Nigerians reached the people for whom they were intended.
