As the security crisis rocked Northern Nigeria with North-East battling Boko Haram insurgency, North central Farmer-herders while North West tried to contain banditry, the World Food Programme (WFP) has forecasted that Northern Nigeria May Experience famine.
According to WFP, signs of famine are re-emerging in parts of northern Nigeria for the first time in a decade amid a surge in extremist violence.
According to a new report from Cadre Harmonisé, the West African food security monitor backed by the UN that around 15,000 people in Borno State will face “catastrophic hunger” during the 2026 lean season when the harvest is exhausted.
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It is the most severe classification of hunger on the five-phase scale used by the organisation to monitor food insecurity and equates to famine conditions.
The hunger hotspots include three camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the northeast – Dikwa, Ngala, Damasak – as well as surrounding host communities located along Nigeria’s volatile borders with Chad, Cameroon and Niger, where armed groups have streamed across porous frontiers and consolidated control.
A surge in killings and mass kidnappings across the north, combined with soaring inflation and the collapse of essential aid programmes, has created what officials have called Nigeria’s worst emergencies in a decade.
Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP’s Director of Food Security Analysis, told The Telegraph that “When we see Phase Five, things have really gone very, very extreme.”
“The issue in northeast Nigeria is one of access,” he added, warning that extremist groups could “exploit hunger to pursue agendas that could destabilize neighbouring areas”.
Despite its vast oil wealth and booming megacities like Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria is still heavily dependent on foreign importation of food.
More than 40 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty.
The WFP described Nigeria’s escalating hunger crisis as the worst since 2015, when Boko Haram’s insurgency pushed parts of the northeast to the brink of famine, prompting the UN to launch a major operation covering Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.
But global aid cuts are hampering the agency’s ability to respond to the current crisis.
In July, the WFP was forced to close half of its nutrition programmes in the northeast, cutting off treatment for more than 300,000 children, while Nigeria’s UN appeal is only 28 per cent funded, with $258 million received against a requirement of $910 million for 2025.
“We’re running out of money for food and nutrition assistance next month. That’s really the urgency for us at this moment,” Mr Bauer said.
Famine conditions currently affect less than one per cent of Borno’s population of six million, according to the report, but 35 million people, around 15 per cent of Nigeria’s population, are projected to face “severe food insecurity” next year.
Mr Bauer warned of the risk of regional spillover similar to that seen the last time insecurity in the region created a hunger crisis.