UNICEF predicts 25m Nigerians at risk of high hunger

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has predicted that not less that 25 million Nigerians are at the risk of ‘high hunger’ across the country, especially in the Northern regions.

The UN agency’s Nutrition Officer for Nigeria, Nkeiruka Enwelum, who disclosed this at a two-day seminar on Nutrition Financing in Nigeria held in Abuja on Monday, said the most affected states were Borno, Katsina, Jigawa and Kano, all in the North with the highest number of food-insecure people in the country.

Enwelum said though the prevalence of hunger due to food insecurity is more widespread in the North, it is slowly spreading to other parts of the country with Lagos currently experiencing hunger and malnutrition due to high cost of food.

Read also: North-East Nigeria has over 1.6m children out-of-school, UNICEF raises the alarm

The National Nutrition Officer noted that with the indices on ground, about 35 million children in Nigeria are malnourished with the country having the highest number of affected children in Africa and the second highest in the world.

“About 35 million of under-five children in Nigeria are malnourished. And out of this, 12 million are stunted,” she said.

“The reason for this can be attributed the high burden of malnutrition in the country to poverty, ignorance, and inadequate budgetary allocation for nutrition,” she added.

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