The World Bank has increased its disbursement to Nigeria from about $300 million to $315 million, out of the $800 million approved for the National Social Safety-Net Program Scale Up (NSSP-SU).
This means that about $15 million was released to Nigeria within a month of the previous disbursement, which was first exclusively reported by newsmen.
According to the Implementation Status & Results Report for the project, about 42% of the entire loan is yet to be disbursed, as there is a pending balance of about $428.31 million.
Based on a document obtained from the World Bank, out of the $800 million, about $600 million will be spent on Economic Shock Responsive Cash Transfer (ESR-CT), $147 million will be spent on Extended Regular Cash Transfer (ER-CT) for the poor and the vulnerable, and $53 million will be spent on the delivery system strengthening and project management.
The document further disclosed that the Federal Government planned to reach about five million beneficiaries by mid-December.
However, approximately 1.5 million households have received cash transfers, which is only about 0.1% of the project’s overall target of 15 million households.
Also, the initial project goal was to release N5,000 monthly to poor and vulnerable Nigerians but the Federal Government wrote to the World Bank to modify this goal and increase the cash to N25,000 monthly over three months.
