UN, NGOs appeal for $396m to tame hunger, malnutrition in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe

To prevent catastrophic hunger and malnutrition in northeast Nigeria, $396 million is urgently needed to scale up humanitarian action in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) states.

More than half a million people may face emergency levels of food insecurity, with extremely high rates of acute malnutrition and cases of mortality, if there is no rapid and significant scale up of humanitarian assistance.

An estimated two million children under-five in the three states are likely to face wasting this year. This is the most immediate and life-threatening form of malnutrition. Some 700,000 children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition – meaning they are 11 times more likely to die, compared to well-nourished children.

The deepening food crisis and worrying malnutrition levels are the result of years of protracted conflict and insecurity, which continue to prevent more than two million people from returning home. A combination of fuel and food inflation, a naira cash crisis earlier in the year, and climate shocks (such as the record floods in Nigeria in 2022), are among factors that have worsened the crisis.

“I have seen firsthand the anguish of mothers fighting for the lives of their malnourished infants in our partner-run stabilisation centres. This is a situation no one should have to face,” said Mr. Matthias Schmale, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria.

“I have spoken with children who described going for days without eating enough. Mothers who said their children go to bed crying from hunger. Families struggling to feed their families as they have gone for months without receiving food assistance.”

This may become the unfortunate reality for millions of food-insecure people in the BAY states, unless resources and funding are urgently mobilised. If additional funding is not received, humanitarian partners will only reach about 300,000 of the 4.3 million at-risk people in need of food assistance during the peak of the lean season. As more people in urgent need of food aid go unassisted, there will be an increased risk of starvation and death.

With current limited resources, nearly 3.4 million people will not be reached with agricultural livelihood support, including farming input such as fertilisers. This funding gap is critical for agricultural livelihoods sustaining over 80 per cent of vulnerable people across the BAY states. A critical part of addressing the food crisis is to enable people to grow their own food.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling up its operations to assist 2.1 million people with emergency food and nutrition supplies. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and nutrition partners aim to provide life-saving nutrition services to over one million malnourished children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) plans to reach two million people with seed packages to secure cereal production for the upcoming harvest.

“While we continue to work together to stave off catastrophe, the sheer scale of the food and nutrition crisis means that humanitarian assistance is critical right now,” said Mr. David Stevenson, the Country Representative and Country Director of WFP in Nigeria.