Jihadist violence has displaced rural communities from Nigeria’s northern agricultural heartland. Now, aid agencies warn that funding cuts and abandoned farmlands threaten food security in Nigeria.
The United Nations (UN) has described a looming hunger crisis in northern Nigeria as “unprecedented,” with analysts estimating that at least 5 million children are already suffering from acute malnutrition. This is despite northern Nigeria traditionally being the nation’s agricultural heartland, producing maize, millet, and sorghum.
In northeastern Nigeria alone, which includes Borno State, over one million people are believed to be facing hunger. Margot van der Velden, Western Africa Regional Director for the World Food Programme (WFP), said nearly 31 million Nigerians face acute food insecurity and need life-saving food, just as funds for West and Central Africa are shrinking.
Dwindling aid funds
Many aid programs in West Africa face closure following the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID. The WFP warned its emergency food aid program would stop by July 31 due to “critical funding shortfalls” and that its food and nutrition stocks “have been completely exhausted.” By late July, the WFP’s appeal for over $130 million (€113 million) to sustain operations in Nigeria for 2025 was only 21% funded.
“It is a matter of emergency for the government to see what it can do urgently to provide relief so that there is no outbreak of conflict which will be counter-productive to the progress made in the past,” Dauda Muhammad, a humanitarian coordinator in northeastern Nigeria, told DW.
Dauda adds that reduced funding, along with few job opportunities and soaring prices, would bring about food insecurity that could undo years of work that tried to diminish the influence of armed jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram, in northern Nigeria.
However, Samuel Malik, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa, a pan-African think-tank, told DW that the root cause of the problem lies elsewhere. “The hunger crisis currently crippling northern Nigeria is fundamentally a consequence of poor governance and protracted insecurity, rather than the result of aid cuts.”
He says that although “plays a vital role in alleviating the most severe manifestations of Nigeria’s food insecurity, it was never designed to be comprehensive or a long time.”
Villagers have been forced to flee unsafe rural areas to places like the Ramin Kura displacement camp in Sokoto, northwestern Nigeria. 40-year-old Umaimah Abubakar from Ranganda village told DW she moved there after bandits killed her husband and rustled all her in-laws’ animals.
“Whenever we heard they were approaching, we would run and hide,” she said, adding that the community has tried to protect itself by recruiting vigilantes. “Everyone is suffering because there’s no food. We couldn’t farm this year. Sometimes, when we manage to plant, the bandits attack before the harvest. Other times, after you’ve harvested and stored your crops, they come and burn everything.”
She says she earns a little money by washing plates to buy food for her children.
“Those who didn’t farm will surely go hungry. No farming means no food, especially for villagers like us,” Abubakar told DW, “Many now resort to begging or doing odd jobs. We used to plant millet, guinea corn, maize, and sesame.”