Nigerians were among the world’s hungriest people in 2018 according to a new joint United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU) report published on Tuesday, April 2, 2019.
The 2019 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) from the UN which disclosed that Nigerians were among world’s hungriest people in 2018, also disclosed that the number of people unable to meet their daily food needs without humanitarian assistance has been rising for several years.
While a short-term outlook of food insecurity for 2019 also showed that Nigeria will remain among the world’s most severe cases of food crises ( as the other seven currently affected), data pooled from 15 agencies in the international humanitarian and development community showed that Nigeria, northern Nigeria to be specific, was one of the eight countries that housed two-thirds of the 113 million people who faced acute hunger across the globe in 2018.
“The worst food crises in 2018, in order of severity, were: Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Sudan, South Sudan and northern Nigeria..
“These eight countries accounted for two thirds of the total number of people facing acute food insecurity – amounting to nearly 72 million people,” the report read.
“Large segments of populations in most of these countries risk falling into Emergency (IPC/CH Phase 4) levels of acute food insecurity. At the peak of the lean season, three million were acutely food insecure in the three north-eastern states affected by the Boko Haram insurgency where protracted conflict and mass displacement disrupted agriculture, trade, markets and livelihoods, and pushed up food prices,”the report added.
Food crises across the world in 2018 were primarily driven by persistent instability in conflict-ridden regions and adverse climate events, and it was further gathered that it affected 16 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) with 5.3 million people estimated to be “in crisis or worse”. Worst-hit were identified to be three million people resident in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, northeastern states that have bore the brunt of a 10-year insurgency by terrorist group, Boko Haram.
