Manny Ita
The United Nations and the Federal Government of Nigeria officially launched the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) in Abuja on Thursday, requesting $516 million to combat a rapidly escalating food security crisis. The appeal comes as the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Mohamed Malick Fall, warned that the situation has reached a critical tipping point, noting that the projected numbers are “not just statistics; they represent lives and futures.” According to the report, nearly 35 million Nigerians are expected to face acute hunger during the 2026 lean season, with roughly 3 million children under the age of five at risk of life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.
The crisis is most acute in the northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe, where 5.8 million people require urgent assistance and approximately 15,000 individuals in Borno are currently classified as being in a “catastrophic” hunger phase. Despite the rising severity of the situation, the $516 million request is 43% lower than the previous year’s target, a move officials attribute to a “sharp drop in available global funding.” This budgetary constraint has forced humanitarian agencies to prioritize only the 2.5 million most vulnerable people, a significant decrease from the 3.6 million targeted in 2025. The World Food Programme cautioned that without immediate funding, aid to over 1 million people in the Northeast could be suspended within weeks.
In response to the diminishing international aid, the Nigerian government is pivoting toward a strategy of national self-reliance. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Vice President Kashim Shettima detailed the “Back to the Farm” initiative, signaling a shift away from what the UN describes as a “no longer sustainable” foreign-led aid model. Shettima emphasized that the government is now treating food security as a “macroeconomic and national security issue” rather than solely a humanitarian concern, aiming to reduce the $10 billion spent annually on food imports by resettling displaced farmers and providing climate-resilient seeds.
The humanitarian emergency is being driven by a combination of a 16-year insurgency, climate-related crop failures, and record-high inflation that has rendered basic staples unaffordable for the average citizen. While the government attempts to transition toward long-term agricultural production, the UN maintains that the immediate $516 million injection is essential to prevent a full-scale famine in the coming months.
