FG seeks funding support for over 4m malnourished people in north-east

The federal government says more investment is needed to support the over four million persons experiencing hunger and malnutrition in the north-east.

The government and the United Nations called on international partners to support Nigeria with funds to address food shortage in the region.

Sugra Mahamood, director of irrigation agriculture and crop development, federal ministry of agriculture and rural development (FMARD), spoke at the lunch of the lean season food security and nutrition crisis, multi-sector plan 2023 in Abuja.

Mahamood said many people living in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe categorised as BAY states have been battling a nutritional crisis fueled by the security challenges in the region.

“It is our collective responsibility to ensure that they have access to adequate and nutritious food to meet their basic needs,” NAN quoted Mahmood as saying.

“Our commitment is to mobilise funding and resources to urgently scale up our responses to the challenges at hand.”

Speaking on the impact of the food crisis, Matthias Schmale, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria, said urgent interventions were needed to prevent the nutrition situation in the north-east.

Schmale said the situation was aggravated by the insurgency in the region which prevented food production.

Trond Jensen, head of the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the 2023 cadre harmonise estimated that about 4.3 million people in the BAY states were at risk of severe hunger.

Jensen said the situation would deepen between June and August, adding that $1.3 billion was urgently needed to support six million people in the north-east.

He said $396.1 million would also be required to provide food security and nutrition support for another 2.8 million persons living in the region.

“More than half a million of these people will face emergency levels of food insecurity with extremely high acute malnutrition and cases of mortality predicted unless a rapid and significant scale-up of humanitarian assistance is undertaken,” Jensen said.

“Approximately, two million children under five years of age, across the three states, will be acutely malnourished in 2023, and this will put them at a greater risk of dying from common infections, causing developmental stagnation.”

On his part, Fred Kafeero, country representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said about $40 million will be needed in the 2023 lean season to provide farming inputs for farmers in the north-east.

Kafeero said providing farming inputs such as fast-maturing seed varieties, fertilizer, and livestock feeds would encourage local food production and avert the nutrition crisis.

“Timeliness is a critical factor in food production as it is dictated by seasons, this is the time to invest before it gets too late,” he added.