About 1.4 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in northeastern Nigeria are at the risk of starvation following the withdrawal of humanitarian funding by the United Nations (UN).
The Cadre Harmonisé Food and Nutrition Insecurity Analysis, led by the government of Nigeria, with support from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and other partners, had earlier projected that 33.1 million Nigerians would face high levels of food insecurity during the June–August 2025 lean season.
This brings to 34.7 million, the number of Nigerians at the risk of hunger.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its report entitled ‘Nigeria 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan’, detailed the humanitarian challenges in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, confirming that 1.8 million children are at risk of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM).
The report attributed the situation to the record inflation in Nigeria, with food inflation reaching 40.9 per cent in June 2024.
It also linked it to currency devaluation, climate shocks and conflict in the northeast.
UN funding cut
The reduction of funding, in recent months, had forced the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to ration its support, and now it has completely run out, according to the BBC.
It reported that one Aisha Abubakar had lost more than half her family because of attacks on her village in Borno State as well as illness. She is among close to 1.4 million displaced people in the North East who are fully dependent on humanitarian aid for survival.
She spoke to the BBC after taking her youngest child to the aid distribution centre at Gwoza. She rocked the baby while waiting for her turn at the registration centre, holding her blue debit card.
The support for the month was credited onto the card, and the amount depends on the holder’s family size. Ms Abubakar received $20 (£15) and with it, she bought a sack of maize and other food items.
She said she was grateful, but that it was not enough to sustain her family for a month.
Trust Mlambo, head of operations in the area for WFP, told the BBC that “We don’t have any more to give after this [month’s] cycle.”
“Our warehouses are empty and we are desperate for any generous donations.”
The US State Department acknowledged that its recent reorganisation of humanitarian assistance programmes had resulted in some cuts in line with President Donald Trump’s America First Policy.
“The United States continues to be the most generous nation in the world, and we urge other nations to increase their humanitarian efforts,” a senior State Department official told the BBC.
It had said previously that 80 per cent of the United States’ government’s support to the WFP had not been affected.
On the ground in Nigeria, the lower support from all donors to the WFP this year has resulted in a spike in malnutrition rates, it was gathered.
More than 150 donor-funded clinics that have been treating malnutrition in the North East of the country are also facing imminent closure.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the number of children with the most severe and deadly form of malnutrition more than doubled in the first half of the year.
“Six hundred and fifty two children have already died in our facilities since the beginning of 2025 due to lack of timely access to care,” the medical charity said.
The true scale of the crisis exceeded all expectations, MSF’s country representative for Nigeria, Ahmed Aldikhari, said in a statement.
He added that 2024 had “marked a turning point in northern Nigeria’s nutritional crisis”, as major donors, including the US, UK and the European Union had scaled down or halted their support altogether.
‘We can’t go to our farms’
The situation is compounded by the fact that many people cannot go to their farms due to attacks. Already, there have been reports of attacks on farmers in the region. In Gwoza, a mother of two, 25-year-old Hauwa Badamasi, said she had been unable to go to her family’s farm near her home village for years because of insecurity.
She lamented her situation after learning that her first child, Amina, was malnourished despite her best efforts to provide healthy food.
“The aid has stopped, and people are being killed on the farm. What are we going to do with our lives?” she asked while speaking to the BBC.
“We will be in a dire situation with no food and no medicine,” said Ms Badamasi. Our survival depends on these essentials,” she added.
‘Rise in recruitment by terrorists imminent’
Aid agencies have warned that the drastic cuts to humanitarian aid in the North East could push more displaced people into the arms of Boko Haram terrorists.
“It will be much easier for militants to lure youths to join them and spiral insecurity across the whole region,” Trust Mlambo, head of operations in the area for WFP, told the BBC.
Boko Haram has been classified as one of the world’s deadliest jihadist groups, and a splinter group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2015.
Mlambo offered a bleak assessment of things to come, suggesting that the lack of food could push desperate people back into the hands of the militants.
“If people here feel that their livelihood [is gone], they can’t even have the next meal, for sure, they will be pushed to go just across the [hills] to enroll,” said Mlambo.
Borno ready to mitigate effects of aid cuts’
The Borno State Government yesterday said it was well prepared for the challenges ahead, citing strategic policies designed to take care of the vulnerable indigenes in the state.
Speaking to Daily Trust, the state’s Commissioner for Information and Internal Security, Prof Usman Tar, said: “In response to these challenges, the governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, has proactively established policies and programmes to mitigate the adverse effects of these funding cuts”.
Recognising the phenomenon of donor fatigue even before the funding reductions, he said the governor had directed the agency for coordination to ensure that all government-led interventions were effectively managed.
“This has led to a strategic approach where interventions are collaboratively planned, incorporating sustainability components into the programmes.
“Moreover, the Borno State Development Plan, coupled with a comprehensive 10-year strategic transformation initiative, reflects the government’s commitment to addressing chronic issues head-on.
“The prioritisation of resource allocation to areas with the greatest need underpins the state’s current strategy, emphasising a structured and long-term approach to development amidst fiscal adversity,” he said.
‘Reliance on foreign aid has made many lazy’
In an interview with one of our correspondents last night, a security and intelligence expert, Abdullahi Garba, described the withdrawal of the funding “as a blessing in disguise”.
He alleged that reliance on foreign aid in the North had made many people lazy.
Garba, who explained that its benefits outweigh its negative implications, noted that the insurgents and terrorists might be starved of funding as well.
“I’m not saying that the international organisations are funding the terrorists with part of the aid to IDPs, but if you look at it critically, the insurgency in the North East has refused to go away in that region despite the intervention.
“Let me say that it has both positive and negative implications, but one, positive aspect outweighs the other in the sense that those in IDPs would now have to rethink how to survive,” he said.
When reminded that the terrorists might want to recruit the IDPs into their fold, the expert said the terrorists might not have the financial strength to recruit them.
“Why is it that it is only in the North that we have IDPs’ camps because of insurgency? Go to the South West, you won’t see IDP camps because of insecurity, because everybody faces his or her business squarely.
“If you see any IDP camp in the South, it would either be because of a natural disaster like a flood, not because of man-made insecurity.
“In fact, such camps won’t last in the South because everyone wants to be independent.
“The culture of relying on foreign aid in the North has made so many people lazy. It is that laziness that made some people fall for the antics of the terrorists when they are recruiting.
“I will advise that we look inwards in the North, push away adversaries in our domain if the government cannot help and face our business.
“What our government needs to do now is to ensure that it cuts off funding of these enemies by taming terrorism financing by all means,” the security expert stated.
When contacted yesterday, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Mrs Rhoda Illya, declined comment.
She urged our reporter to visit the office and speak to relevant authorities to get the information needed.
Also, the Director-General of the North East Governors’ Forum, Umar Musa Gulani, declined to speak on the efforts of the state governors in the zone to fill the funding gaps, saying, “I am not in the position to tell you anything”.
UNICEF Nigeria Representative, Cristian Munduate, had, earlier this year, said nearly 5.4 million under-five children in the North West and North East were suffering from acute malnutrition, with projections indicating an additional one million cases by April 2025.
The UNICEF representative had called on the Nigerian government to scale up nutrition interventions and promote child spacing initiatives to tackle the underlying challenge of rapid population growth.
In 2024, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said its teams treated about 357,000 children suffering from malnutrition in the North.
“This is an increase of 35 per cent compared to the 265,500 children treated in 2023. Among those treated in 2024, 75,000 required inpatient care, while 282,000 received outpatient treatment. In 2024, the surge in malnutrition cases began as early as March, well before the usual peak season in July, and extended through November, a time when cases are typically expected to decline. This situation raises fears that the severity of malnutrition in 2025 could exceed that of previous years,” MSF said in a statement in March.
Its international president, Christos Christou, had said the numbers in 2022 and 2023 were already critically high, adding that between January to August 2024, MSF saw a 51 percent increase in admissions of children with severe malnutrition, compared to the same period the previous year.
He said MSF also treated 52,725 children with severe malnutrition, a life-threatening condition across North in the first eight months of last year.
Speaking after his visit to MSF treatment centres in Maiduguri, Borno State, he said: “Unvaccinated children are particularly vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases, which elevate the risk of acute malnutrition.
In May this year, the Head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Nigeria, (UN-OCHA), Trond Jensen, was reported to have said the number of severely acutely malnourished children in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states had doubled from 500,000 last year to 1,000,000 this year.
He said this was as a result of to the United States’ funding cut which decreased the capacity of the apex humanitarian agency to address the situation.
He said the UN’s capacity to deal with malnutrition in the Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States had halved due to the funding cut.
Jensen spoke during a meeting with Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni to discuss the funding challenges and the way forward.
He had stated: “We are facing a profound crisis; 60 percent of the funding that was provided for humanitarian purpose here in Nigeria came from the US and that unfortunately is now history.
“What we have also seen is that many of our other supporters such as the UK have reduced their support by 40 per cent, Netherlands 50 per cent, same with the Germans.
“That underlines the need for government, the international community and local partners and civil society organisations, (CSOs) to work ever closer to resolve some of these issues.”
FG’s recent comment on malnutrition
Two weeks ago, Vice President Kashim Shettima said malnutrition had deprived 40 per cent of Nigerian children under five their full physical and cognitive potential.
He had also promised that the government would tackle it.
The statement followed the inauguration, last month, of a nutrition board, which the vice president described as a “war room to battle malnutrition in every corner of the country”.
But beyond the rallying call, the question is how fast and how far it can act to halt and reverse the staggering levels of under nutrition amid the sweeping and sudden cuts to funding that much of the region relied on for years.
Additional reports by Hamisu Kabir Matazu (Maiduguri), Idowu Isamotu and Maurine Onochie (Abuja)
