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Nigeria’s Country Director of the World Bank, Lire Ersado, has identified lack of coordination as a factor hindering the fight against multidimensional poverty ravaging the country. He gave the grim verdict last week at the launch of the federal government’s initiative on poverty reduction, titled “One Humanitarian-One Poverty Response System (OHOPRS)” in Abuja.
“A lot of efforts that go into poverty reduction are not having the kind of impact we would like to see. The first reason is lack of coordination. We are not well coordinated in the humanitarian nexus,” Ersado said. “We run a parallel system in silos in terms of identifying the needy, in terms of targeting them, in terms of benefit design and in principle monitoring,” he stated.
While acknowledging the challenges listed by the World Bank Country Director, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Bernard Doro, reiterated the federal government’s new plan to lift 50 million Nigerians out of poverty as contained in OHOPRS. Government should recalibrate its poverty reduction programmes for effective delivery and lifting 50 million Nigerians or more out of poverty.
Available statistics from the Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction Office, as well as data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), show that between 2015 and early 2025, the sum of N3.5trillion was spent on poverty alleviation programmes, with the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) as the flagship initiative. The NSIP covers four key areas such as the N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT), and the Home -Grown School feeding programme.
These efforts run alongside the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) and the 2021-2025 National Development Plan (NDP) aimed at fostering job creation and economic empowerment. Sadly, the impact of government’s poverty alleviation programmes has been heavily debated. For instance, the N-Power, which is designed to provide vocational training and temporary employment for unemployed youths and varsity graduates, has not really done much.
Also, the Conditional Cash Transfers that ought to provide stipends to the poorer households to reduce poverty and improve education and health outcomes has had little impact. In the same way, the NDP, which has the goal of lifting 35 million per cent of Nigerians out of poverty and create 21 million full-time jobs by 2025, has been riddled with corruption allegations. These lofty initiatives have been hampered by ineffective implementation. There is opacity in funds management and disbursement to beneficiaries.
Unfortunately, poverty alleviation programmes lack credible data. Instead of being nationwide, some of them are limited to certain geographical locations. Despite huge budgetary allocation to reduce poverty, it is increasing. The factors that fuel poverty in the country must be urgently tackled. These include dwindling value of the naira, unemployment, rising cost of living and poor wages. The benefits of billions of dollars said to have been saved as a result of fuel subsidy removal have not trickled down to the poor and vulnerable in the society.
Also, galloping inflation has erased the purchasing power of many Nigerians, with the poor being the hardest hit. To make matters worse, the high-level corruption in the Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Ministry that led to the suspension and eventual sack of the minister two years ago, contributed to the low impact of poverty reduction efforts. We call for a new impetus in the new drive to reduce poverty. In this regard, there is need to overhaul the poor data tracking system in the poverty reduction programmes.
The credibility of the National Social Register has repeatedly been questioned. They do not cover the entire country. At times, they miss some of the vulnerable Nigerians. This is weakening the impact of such programmes. With more than 133 million Nigerians or 63 per cent in multidimensional poverty, government should scale up budgetary allocation to lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty.
Nigeria, according to latest World Bank report, invests a paltry 0.45 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in poverty alleviation programmes. This is far below the sub-Saharan African average of 1.1 per cent. Even some of the programmes designed to alleviate poverty are largely ‘top-down’ without active participation of the poor. Consequently, this leads to their poor implementation. Some of the programmes are often abandoned by subsequent administration.
According to statistics from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), poverty has increased from 40 per cent in 2018 to 56 per cent in 2024. World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimate that, by the end of 2026, poverty in Nigeria will reach an all-time high of 62 per cent, or 141 million of the population. To stem the gathering storm, the government must use the OHOPRS to lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty, especially now that economic pressures and shrinking global aid have called for a more efficient and unified response.
