The Federal Government, yesterday, admitted to Nigeria’s status as the poverty capital of the world, when it disclosed that 133 million of its citizens are currently living in poverty.

Leveraging a facility from the World Bank, the Federal Government of Nigeria established the National Social Safety Nets Project (NASSP) in 2016, pursuant to fulfilling a vital campaign promise by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 during the build-up to the general elections that brought him to power. In this exclusive interview with The Guardian in June 2022, Mr.  Iorwa Apera, who is the National Coordinator of the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) and the brain behind the success of this historic social protection project, told Yange Ikyaa and Tina Abeku that Nigeria’s National Social Register is the largest in the world, from which different organizations have mined to extend benefits to millions of Nigerians. He also affirmed that the register remains the country's most comprehensive database of individuals, with detailed information on over 50 million poor and vulnerable citizens, including about 138 points of social indicators linked to every individual that is captured in the database.

Some N50 billion is disbursed every two months by the Federal Government to about one million beneficiaries of its cash transfer programme across the federation from the repatriated Abacha loot...

The World Bank has advised Nigeria to scale up its social investment programmes to address the large number of people living in extreme poverty in the country.