Nigeria is facing a worsening nutrition emergency as an unusually early lean season and rising food prices push more children into acute malnutrition, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has warned.
The crisis, the IRC said, is being intensified by global energy disruptions linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has driven up fuel costs in Nigeria and fed into broader food price inflation at a time when households are least able to cope.
Fuel prices have surged sharply, with diesel up about 95% and petrol rising by around 65%, adding pressure to transport and food distribution costs across the country.
Between October 2025 and March 2026, IRC-supported facilities recorded a 20% increase in inpatient admissions for severe acute malnutrition with medical complications compared with the previous year. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, 2,546 children were admitted for treatment, a 32% rise over the same period in 2025.
Outpatient treatment centres are also under strain, particularly in northwestern Nigeria, where admissions have more than doubled to over 18,000 children, signaling a sharp deterioration even before the peak hunger months between harvests.
Health workers say the trend is unusually early and severe.
“I have just returned from northern Nigeria where I witnessed children suffering from levels of malnutrition I have not seen in a very long time,” said Céline Soulier, Nutrition Technical Advisor for the IRC in West and Central Africa. “What is especially alarming is that the hungry season has only just begun, yet hospitals are already full, struggling to admit the growing number of children with severe acute malnutrition.”
She warned that funding and staffing gaps are worsening the crisis. “New cases are already rising rapidly, while staffing levels remain unchanged, placing immense pressure on frontline health workers and threatening the quality of care that vulnerable children urgently need.”
Beyond economic pressures, insecurity continues to drive food shortages and limited access to healthcare in northern Nigeria. Armed conflict in the northwest and ongoing insurgency in the northeast have disrupted farming, trade routes, and humanitarian access, compounding the impact of inflation and disease outbreaks such as measles, malaria and diarrhoea.
Areas of Borno State, where displacement has persisted for years, remain among the hardest hit due to restricted access and limited economic activity.
Conditions are expected to deteriorate further through the peak lean season before the next harvest.
The IRC said it is expanding emergency nutrition services, including inpatient treatment for severe cases, outpatient feeding programmes, community screening, and training for frontline health workers.
The organisation’s response is heavily supported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which funds nearly 70% of its nutrition operations in Nigeria.
The IRC has operated in Nigeria since 2012, delivering health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education services across conflict- and climate-affected communities. It currently runs nutrition programmes in parts of the northwest — Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina — as well as in Borno and Adamawa in the northeast, including multiple inpatient and outpatient treatment centres.
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