Nigeria’s hunger problem has worsened in the last one month as the economy staggered and prices soared with millions of families unable to feed well, new United Nations data show.
The UN’s HungerMap, which monitors and predicts the severity of hunger in near real-time, says the number of people in Nigeria with insufficient food consumption rose in the last 30 days by 1.14 million – the highest monthly rise in at least one week, according to Pluboard analysis.
HungerMap is run by the UN’s World Food Programme. It combines key metrics from various data sources – such as food security information, weather, population size, conflict, hazards, nutrition information and macro-economic data – to assess the magnitude of global hunger.
It uses computer assisted telephone interviewing to collect data on a rolling basis, spread evenly over a past 28/30 calendar days or over a three-month period. In areas where limited or no data is available, the WFP uses machine learning-based predictive models to estimate the food security situation.
– Worsening hunger
As of 13.02 pm Nigerian time on Thursday, Nigeria had one of the world’s most severe hunger cases with 75.5 million of the total 203 million people unable to get enough food daily. The figure represents a slight improvement of 310,000 over the last three months.
The WFP defines poor food consumption as cases where households cannot consume staples and vegetables every day and never or very seldom consume protein-rich food such as meat and dairy.
The dashboard shows that the highest levels of food insecurity in Nigeria is concentrated in the northern part of the country, especially the northeast and northwest, long afflicted by conflict.
The worst nationwide case was Katsina where 60.4% of the population could not feed well daily, and the least affected state was Anambra with 14.35% of the population affected.
Pluboard tracked the figures for the last two weeks, and the new data show the situation worsened, coinciding with increased hardship across the country following the removal of fuel subsidy and currency reform.
Both policies caused a significant rise in prices in goods and services. Inflation reached 22.8% in June, the highest since 2005.
On Wednesday, a long-planned protest by the labour unions held across the country before it was suspended following a meeting between labour leaders and President Tinubu, who on Monday unveiled a range of measures to minimize the impact of the reforms Nigerians. Labour leaders had rejected the measures as not being far reaching enoug
– Increased vulnerability
Gbadebo Odularu, founder and chief strategist at the charity No Hunger Food Bank, said the new UN data shows how serious hunger remains in the country. Nonetheless, he said the numbers were unlikely to fully reflect the current hardship in the country.
“The hunger situation is getting deeper. We should call it hunger cum humanitarian crisis. Hunger is not increasing at an arithmetic progression; it is increasing at a geometric progression,” he said.
“We cannot take away the issue of climate change and considerable waste of food which makes the hunger situation worse.”
No Hunger Food Bank works with other groups to minimize food waste and make food available to vulnerable populations. The group says it has reached over 50,000 beneficiaries.
More people have called in for help in the last three months of heightened economic suffering in the country, Professor Odularu, who also teaches Economics at Bay Atlantic University, Washington DC, told Pluboard.
“In as much as there is hunger in the land, there is food waste. It calls for urgent action on the part of government and consolidated action between the government and non-governmental organizations,” he said.
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