The revelation that more than 350,000 children in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Benue State are suffering malnutrition and are in danger of becoming permanently stunted is distressing and calls for urgent action to save the lives of the affected children.
 
This is one of the sad experiences that thousands of innocent citizens are being made to suffer by ravaging criminal elements who, for no justifiable reasons, have taken up arms against the country, killing people freely and abducting others for ransom. Their cruel activities led to the displacement of millions of Nigerians, especially in the northern part of the country, from their ancestral communities. It is unfortunate that today, Nigeria is known to have a significant number of internally displaced persons. Recent estimates from June 2025 place the figure at about 8 million, the highest in West Africa.
  
One of the pathetic effects of being kept in IDP camps, which now threatens the lives of the entangled children, is malnutrition caused by underfeeding and poor health services, among other factors. This would most probably not have happened to the children if their parents had not been displaced from their homes and their means of livelihood terribly disrupted. The government must intensify its war against the scourge of terror, kidnapping and other terrible activities of the hardened criminals to make the country a safe place to live in and do business. It is then that the displaced people can return to their communities and to their means of livelihood, including farming and the rearing of animals, and adequately feed themselves, thereby being free from the shackles of malnutrition and other unfortunate experiences they are suffering in the camps.
 
President of the Leadership Institute in Nigeria, Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, raised the alarm over the deepening humanitarian crisis in the IDPs, which he said had become a serious threat to the lives of the affected children. At the 2025 Leadership Public Lecture/Excellence Awards and Appeal Fund for the Educational Rehabilitation of displaced children in Benue State, Hagher emphasised that Nigeria was treating the children as mere statistics rather than human beings with lives, dreams and human rights that should be protected. He painted a picture of a country that is producing a generation of children with no purpose. ‘We do not see them as human beings whom the country owes a responsibility to nourish, to grow, to help dream again. But they are no longer dreaming. A seven-year-old child today knows how to dodge bullets,’ he said.

According to him, thousands of the kids in the IDPs are not only starving but are also battling trauma, from years of witnessing killings, abductions, rape and violent displacement of people from their homes. ‘Children are being born who may not grow beyond three and a half feet because their mothers have no food,’ Hagher lamented at the event held recently in Abuja.
  
Malnutrition is a condition resulting from a deficiency in energy, protein, or other nutrients that affects body tissues and functions. It is not just about not eating enough but also about not getting the right nutrients. The condition impairs the sufferer’s physical and mental growth, even when the person eats plenty of food. Other effects include weakened immune system, fatigue, unexplained height and muscle loss, and an increased risk of illness and death, especially in children.
 
For close to two decades now, the insurgency launched by Boko Haram and other terror groups, including ISWAP and ISIS, in the northern part of Nigeria has forced millions of people, including women and their children, out of their homes, leading to a humanitarian crisis. By way of intervention, the government created the camps to accommodate those displaced while military operations were launched to tackle the terrorists. But over time, more people got displaced following unabated attacks on communities by the hoodlums amid counter military operations. This made the population of IDPs rise, leading to overcrowding and a shortage in the supply of food. Basically, malnutrition stems from a food system collapse caused by insecurity, coupled with herders-farmers conflict, trade disruptions, lack of nutrition knowledge, inadequate health services, especially in maternal and childcare, and reliance on limited, staple-heavy food aid. All of these lead to hunger, disease and severe stunting in children, which have firmly trapped families in cycles of poverty.
 
The idea of IDP camps is compelling in view of the security situation the country has found itself. It is difficult to imagine what would have happened to most of the displaced people if there were no such intervention, particularly as the terrorism that led to their sad fate is not abating. But it is not supposed to be an everlasting arrangement. Keeping people in the camps is supposed to last for a short period of time, during which the government is expected to have crushed the criminals and paved the way for the displaced people to return to their communities and adequately feed themselves.
 
The government has a constitutional responsibility to make the country safe for all citizens to live in. The constitution establishes this responsibility as the primary purpose of government. It follows that the inability to deliver in this regard amounts to the government’s failure. Everything possible should be done to end the insecurity that is forcing people into IDP camps. It is the way to save children who are becoming malnourished.
  
During their stay in the camps, the government must give priority to the feeding and health of the IDPs. Apart from food and healthcare, the education of the children, whose future is being destroyed by the terrorists, must not be allowed to suffer. The government should ensure transparency and accountability in the management of IDP affairs, especially by ensuring that funds and resources set aside for their upkeep are not diverted to private pockets of government officials. There has also been an allegation that some influential people in the government and their cronies are benefiting immensely from the alleged corruption and would not want the fight against insurgency to end. This calls for the investigation and prosecution of anybody found wanting.
 
Political and religious leaders in northern Nigeria must make their influence bear on their youths, who have taken to terrorism, to rub out of their minds all negative ideologies, religious doctrines, ethnic jingoism and political chauvinism that have been fed into their brains and is propelling them into the madness that has turned Nigeria into a theatre of bloodshed and a country now dreaded and shunned by foreigners. The criminals should put themselves in the position of husbands for the displaced mothers, and fathers to their suffering children, and stop making life miserable for the innocent citizens. Malnutrition in the IDP camps should be eradicated. The war against terror should be waged with greater vehemence to exterminate all terrorists.