More Nigerians will fall into poverty by 2027, according to the World Bank’s dire forecast for the country.
Nigeria now has the second-highest number of malnourished children worldwide, surpassing war-torn Sudan, according to a report released by the United Nations Children’s Fund on Monday.
600,000 children in the nation suffer from acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF Chief Nutrition Section Nemat Hajeebhoy, who made this revelation at a media briefing on the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ 2025 lean season multisectoral response.
“Nigeria has the second-highest rate of undernourished children worldwide and the highest rate in Africa,” Ms. Hajeebhoy stated.
She pointed out that half of these kids are at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition.
According to World Food Programme official Serigne Loum, Nigeria has the highest rate of food insecurity in Africa.
OCHA’s request for funding to address the ongoing food and nutrition crises in the North-East states coincided with this damaging revelation.
OCHA’s chief of office, Trond Jensen, stated that the UN agency needed $300 million in total to effectively handle the crisis, with $160 million of the cash needed to address issues with nutrition, water, sanitation, and food insecurity.
“This is the bare minimum that we require,” Mr. Jensen stated. Naturally, we are faced with a contradiction and a dilemma: while the need for severe acute malnutrition has doubled over the course of the year, our capacity to meet those needs has, in certain cases, decreased by half.
While urging state governments and international organizations to help with the response, Mr. Jensen stated that the agency was focusing on two million individuals in terms of the crisis.
Sudan was ranked as the most impoverished nation by the Global Hunger Index last year, followed by Burundi, Somalia, and Yemen.
According to the World Bank’s Africa’s Pulse report from April 2025, Nigeria is home to 19% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s extremely poor, compared to 14% in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 9% in Ethiopia, and 6% in Sudan.
By 2027, more Nigerians would be living in poverty, according to the World Bank’s dire forecast for the country.
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