The National Coordinator of the programme, Dr Assad Hassan, announced the payout on Tuesday in Abuja during a retreat for commissioners, permanent secretaries and directors of budget and planning drawn from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. The retreat also touched on the Anambra World Bank grant exclusion as one of the more notable talking points among attendees.
The HOPE Governance Programme is a $500 million World Bank-backed initiative domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning. It rewards states for hitting reform targets in education, primary healthcare and public financial management, with the aim of improving transparency in public service delivery.
Hassan said the incentives followed an assessment by the Interim Independent Verification Agent, which measured states against the programme’s Year Zero Disbursement-Linked Results — a process central to determining the Anambra World Bank grant outcome.
Bayelsa, Borno, Kano, Kebbi and Yobe emerged the biggest winners. Each received $3 million after meeting two separate benchmarks tied to consolidated work plans for basic education and primary healthcare budgets.
Nine states, including Adamawa, Delta, Gombe, Plateau and Taraba alongside some of the top five, picked up $500,000 each for getting their local governments to adopt harmonised budget guidelines.
A further 15 states qualified for $500,000 each after publishing their 2025 Citizens’ Budgets for basic education and primary healthcare before the deadline. Three southeastern states featured on that list: Abia, Enugu and Imo. Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Kogi, Nasarawa and Ondo also made the cut.
Anambra does not appear on any of the four qualifying lists released by the programme, underscoring the scale of the Anambra World Bank grant exclusion.
Why some states missed out
Hassan did not name Anambra directly when explaining the shortfall. He said states that failed to qualify either published required documents after the 31 March 2025 deadline, did not meet the stipulated conditions, or failed to upload the documents to their official websites – a gap that fuelled speculation about the Anambra World Bank grant shortfall.
He pointed to weak coordination among ministries, departments and agencies as a recurring problem, and said the programme’s verification agent is still concluding a second phase of assessment expected to close by July 2026, which could open a fresh round of incentives.
Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s administration has not issued a public response to the disbursement list as of the time of writing, leaving questions about the Anambra World Bank grant snub unanswered.
A pattern with World Bank facilities
This is not the first time Anambra has stood apart from a World Bank-linked scheme. In March 2025, Soludo said his government pulled the state out of an existing World Bank loan arrangement, telling residents in Awka that the terms were not a good deal for Anambra people. He said the state was the only one of 35 that declined to draw down its share of a $438 million facility late in 2024, arguing that the loan would leave a debt burden for future generations.
That episode involved a loan facility rather than the performance-based grant under the HOPE Governance Programme, and the two schemes are governed by different rules. But it points to a consistent stance from Soludo’s government on World Bank funding mechanisms, whatever the reason behind its absence from the latest incentive list.
What is not yet known
No report from the HOPE Governance Programme has set out a state-by-state breakdown explaining why individual states, including Anambra, missed specific benchmarks. Until Anambra’s government or the programme’s coordinators address the state’s case directly, the exact reason for its absence from the Anambra World Bank grant disbursement remains unconfirmed.
