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Nigeria’s World Bank-backed HOPE Governance Programme will release $27 million in performance-based grants to states that met key governance and public finance reform targets. The first round of incentives is tied to improvements in budgeting, financial accountability and access to spending information for basic education and primary healthcare.
The announcement was made in Abuja by the programme’s National Coordinator, Dr Assad Hassan, during a retreat for commissioners, permanent secretaries and budget officials from Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. He said the grants follow an assessment by an interim independent verification agent.
Several states qualified for different incentive amounts based on how they met the programme’s “Year Zero” results. Bayelsa, Borno, Kano, Kebbi and Yobe each qualified for $1.5 million after adopting standardised guidelines for consolidated budgets in basic education and primary healthcare.
A further nine states will each receive $500,000 for adopting harmonised local government budget guidelines and chart of accounts. These include Adamawa, Bayelsa, Borno, Delta, Gombe, Kano, Plateau, Taraba and Yobe.
Fifteen states also qualified for $500,000 each after publishing citizens’ budgets for 2025 covering primary healthcare and basic education. The list includes Abia, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Imo, Jigawa, Kano, Kebbi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Ondo, Plateau, Bayelsa, Borno and Yobe.
States that missed out either failed to publish the required documents on time, did not meet verification criteria, or did not make the information publicly available through their official websites. Hassan said weak institutional coordination was one of the main reasons some states fell short.
The HOPE Governance Programme is part of a broader $500 million World Bank-supported effort to improve governance and service delivery in Nigeria’s basic education and primary healthcare sectors. It links funding to measurable reforms in public financial management, intergovernmental spending transparency and workforce planning.
Officials are now preparing a capacity-building plan to help states improve future performance. The incentive system reflects a wider shift in development finance, where multilateral lenders increasingly tie support to results rather than broad policy promises.
