WFP says 17 million face food crisis in northern Nigeria

A severe food security crisis in northern Nigeria is deteriorating more rapidly than anticipated, with conflict and shrinking humanitarian aid pushing hunger to its worst levels in nearly a decade, the United Nations World Food Programme warned on Thursday. The agency said more than 17 million people across nine conflict-affected states are now experiencing crisis, emergency, or catastrophic levels of food insecurity, an increase of nearly two million from the last assessment.

The situation is most acute in Borno State, the epicenter of a long-running Islamist insurgency, where more than three million people are acutely food insecure. This includes over 750,000 facing severe hunger and more than 10,000 in catastrophic conditions, the most extreme level. Officials said the crisis is expanding as violence spreads beyond its traditional strongholds in the northeast.

"What concerns us most is how this crisis is expanding," said Kinday Samba, WFP Regional Director for West and Central Africa. He noted that insurgent attacks and violence, once concentrated in the northeast, are now spreading across a much wider area, forcing people from farmland, driving displacement, and restricting...