Save Nigeria’s future from malnutrition

The forecast that 33 million people in Nigeria including over 16 million children will not know where their next meal will come from in 2025 is a worrisome development. The increasing figures of malnourished children particularly in some northern states of Nigeria illustrates how government indifferently watches the country’s future being threatened by a scourge […]

The forecast that 33 million people in Nigeria including over 16 million children will not know where their next meal will come from in 2025 is a worrisome development. The increasing figures of malnourished children particularly in some northern states of Nigeria illustrates how government indifferently watches the country’s future being threatened by a scourge that should not be heard of in any agrarian region of Africa including Nigeria.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had said that lack of funding aggravated by President Donald Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid would hinder the supply of lifesaving food to treat malnourished children in Nigeria within the next two months. It said millions of children under the age of five are suffering from acute malnutrition, and therefore, risk losing access to lifesaving support in Ethiopia and Nigeria.

A recent media publication revealed that many children and their parents are weighed down by the burden of malnutrition. Nutrition experts attribute the persistent malnutrition crisis in northern Nigeria to a variety of factors including inflation, food insecurity, insufficient healthcare infrastructure, ongoing security challenges and disease outbreaks compounded by low vaccine coverage. UNICEF Nigeria Representative, Cristian Munduate, said nearly 5.4 million under-five children in the North West and North East Nigeria are suffering from acute malnutrition, with projections indicating an additional one million cases by the end of April 2025.

Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) said in 2024, its teams treated about 357,000 children suffering from malnutrition in the North. This, according to MSF, showed 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 2024.

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Speaking after his visit to MSF treatment centres in Maiduguri, Borno State, MSF’s international president, Christos Christou, said unvaccinated children are particularly vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases, which elevate the risk of acute malnutrition.

Analysis of hunger data from Cadre Harmonisé showed that 5.4 million children are at risk of facing acute malnutrition by April, a 25 per cent increase compared to the 4.4 per cent last year. SCI said about 1.8 million from this figure could be experiencing Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), which is the deadliest form of malnutrition that compromises children’s immune systems and turns otherwise treatable illnesses such as diarrhoea to become potentially deadly. This, SCI said, represents an alarming 80 per cent increase in SAM cases.

While lamenting on the malnutrition crisis, Save the Children International (SCI)’s Country Director for Nigeria, Duncan Harvey, said the crisis is reaching unprecedented levels in Nigeria as catastrophic climate disasters, escalating insecurity, and soaring food prices threaten to leave over 16 million children hungry. Breastfeeding children are the worst hit as their underfed mothers are unable to produce the milk needed by children for their health and growth. States with escalating levels of malnutrition in children include Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Kano, Sokoto, and Zamfara.

Responding to the rising rates of malnutrition in Kano State, MSF expanded its operations by opening outpatient treatment facilities in Kumbotso and Rijiyar Lemo, in addition to the one located in Unguwa Uku. The MSF project coordinator in the state, Hemmed Lukonge, said, “We are dealing with a chronic and abnormal surge of severe acute malnutrition. Children are coming from around 37 local government areas of Kano State and the state Ministry of Health does not have the necessary means in terms of nutrition supplies and human resources to address the matter.”

The consequences of malnutrition on school-age children are many. Malnutrition is a risk factor for low school enrolment, high absenteeism, early dropouts, and low academic achievement. Similarly, malnourished children are prone to infections and illnesses, which affect school attendance. This prompts us to ask about the much-talked about school feeding programme which, in the face of the malnutrition crisis, should reduce prevalence rate. Like many other government schemes, it has evidently fizzled out.

Due to over reliance on interventions from NGOs, states and local governments abandoned their responsibilities to international donor agencies which is why the now limited interventions from the MSF is triggering statistics of malnourished children. To change this narrative, government must rise to stop the growing tide of child hunger and malnutrition in order to guarantee the country’s future. Government must show commitment to ending the spate of insecurity and providing a secured environment for people to fully engage in farming and trading activities. Government should also provide support to farmers for the mass production of food supplements such as mango and other nutritional fruits.

While Daily Trust calls on government to strategically tackle the threat of child malnutrition by strengthening healthcare facilities to diagnose and treat malnutrition, reinforcing vaccine programmes, enhancing access to nutritious food, we also encourage national and state primary healthcare development agencies to increase awareness on child spacing initiatives. Nigerians, especially children, deserve to grow up safe, well-fed, and healthy. Save Nigeria’s future.