ACTION Aid Nigeria has said five million in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe face acute food insecurity in Nigeria while the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has reminded governments and stakeholders of the need to uphold the dignity of every family, on October 17 in commemoration of the World Poverty Day with the theme: Ending social and institutional maltreatment by ensuring respect and effective support for families.
Country Director of Action Aid Nigeria, Andrew Mamedu, spoke in commemoration of World Food Day 2025 which was October 16 with the theme: “Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future.”
He said the situation is a deep humanitarian crisis driven by insecurity, climate change, and widespread poverty in the country.
Citing the FAO, he noted that about 30.6 million Nigerians across 26 states and the FCT were projected to face acute food and nutrition insecurity during the June and August 2025 lean season.
Although this reflects a slight improvement from the 33.1 million recorded in 2024, Mamedu cautioned that Nigeria still ranks as the country with the highest number of food-insecure people in the world.
He added that hunger hotspots expands beyond Northeast to Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Kwara, Taraba, and Cross River, where economic shocks, conflict, and displacement worsens food crises because of the recurrent attacks and clashes that have kept farmers out of farms, leading to poor production of yam, maize, rice, and others.
While blaming the persistent food inflation, at 21.87 per cent in August, leaving many unable to eat good diets, Action aid Nigeria warned that the world Bank data means that even when food is available, millions cannot afford it.
ActionAid also highlighted alarming levels of malnutrition, pointing to reports that 652 children died from malnutrition in Katsina State in the first half of 2025. Nationwide, malnutrition accounts for 45 percent of all under-five deaths, with more than 2 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The ICIR reports have shown that the immediate effect of these conflicts are, missed planting and harvest seasons, leading to large yield losses, and markets break down. Farmers can’t sell what remains or buy inputs because buyers avoid insecure roads, leading to tight food supply across the country.
The ICIR reported earlier this week that in Kano State, rising food prices fuel malnutrition crisis among nursing mothers, children.
Experts have said that chronic food insecurity increases rates of acute and chronic malnutrition, especially among children and pregnant or nursing women.
Malnutrition lowers children’s cognitive development and school attendance, and reduces adults’ physical capacity to farm, fish, or do manual trades.
World poverty day
UNDP revealed it its 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in collaboration with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative that nearly 80 per cent of the world’s multidimensionally poor people, meaning that 887 million individuals now live in areas exposed to at least one major climate hazard, like high heat, drought, floods, or air pollution. Some 650 million poor people face two or more hazards at the same time.
In Nigeria’s 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), a staggering 133 million people, which is about 63 per cent of the population, are classified as multidimensionally poor.
UNDP, MPI is built using 15 indicators grouped into four dimensions, which are health, education, living standards, work and shocks, to carry equal weight and a household or individual is considered “multidimensionally poor” if they are deprived of a certain share of those indicators.
World Bank recently warned that the Nigeria risks losing reform gains if they fail to translate into tangible improvements revealing that 139 million Nigerians live below the poverty line.
Nigeria’s healthcare system indicators remain poor compared to global averages, despite improvements in some areas like life expectancy and a reduction in under-five mortality.
Many regions in Nigeria still struggle with critical factors that directly affect health outcomes like, unsafe cooking fuel, poor sanitation, and unreliable water supply.
The ICIR reported how government neglect fuels maternal deaths, sexual violence in Plateau State community and how Niger communities rely on untrained Traditional Birth Attendants.
These stories reflect the situation citizens, especially women and children, are facing in several communities across the country.
Data revealed that Nigeria has an under-five mortality rate of 102 per 1,000 live births according to a 2023-24 survey and high rates of malnutrition.
The ICIR reported how low pay, high rents shut out Abuja journalists, reflecting the condition of other practitioners across the country.
While over many houses in Abuja sat empty, nearly two million residents were struggling with homelessness.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Nigeria has one of the world’s largest populations of out-of-school children, with about 10.5 million children aged 5-14 not in school, and lower attendance rates in the north, particularly for girls.
Policy approaches that break the cycle
In his latest remark, Action Aid Nigeria Country Director urged state governments to fully release agricultural capital funds, lamenting that many states have implemented only about 25 per cent of their approved agricultural budgets despite widespread hunger and livelihood challenges.
He insisted that hunger and poverty are not just statistics, they are lived realities for millions of Nigerians.
According to the World Bank, to protect productive assets and access to land, adapting localised protection corridors strategy, negotiated access, or cash-for-work to rehabilitate fields and infrastructure so planting can resume.
World Food Programme suggests that combining immediate food and nutrition support with resilience though emergency rations and therapeutic feeding agricultural inputs like seeds, tools and conditional cash transfers so households can replant are some strategies that will work.
Experts also suggest restoring markets and value chains, noting that this will protect trade routes, support local traders with logistics and credit, and rebuild storage to stabilize prices.
UNICEF has urged the government to invest in health, WASH and school feeding, keep clinics and schools functioning in insecure areas to protect human capital.
It also added to facilitate local peacebuilding and conflict prevention, mediate land access, strengthen local dispute resolution, and address root drivers so that agriculture can restart sustainably.
Poverty in Nigeria is not a single weak link, it is a chain of interlocking deprivations but effective national response must break multiple links at once, not just one.
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues. She has documented sexual war crimes in armed conflict, sex for grades in Nigerian Universities, harmful traditional practices and human trafficking.