By Beyza Binnur Donmez
GENEVA (AA) - The UN's World Food Program (WFP) on Tuesday said that 33 million people in Nigeria to face acute food insecurity in 2025, urging immediate assistance.
The figure is "a sharp increase from the 25 million who need assistance today," Chi Lael, WFP spokesperson for Nigeria, told a UN briefing in Geneva.
"Never before have there been so many people in Nigeria without food," Lael stressed and added: "The data shows that immediate support is needed to avert a potential food and nutrition disaster where the combination of triple-digit increases in food prices in the aftermath of devastating floods and 15 years of insurgency in the northeast are stretching families to the limit."
Regarding the key drivers of food insecurity in the country besides the conflict, she said economic policies, particularly the removal of the fuel subsidy, caused fuel prices to increase by 500% and led to a 100-300% increase in staple food prices.
This made basic foods unaffordable for the 90 million Nigerians earning less than $2 per day, she lamented.
She added that recent devastating floods have wiped out 1.6 million hectares of farmland, affecting the ability to feed 13 million people annually.
To solve the hunger crises, the spokesperson said immediate provision of life-saving food assistance is needed over the next six months.
"It is to make sure that those people who are in (The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) IPC phases three and four, that's crisis and emergency, the very vulnerable, receive food assistance immediately," Lael said.
She said that preventative action in rural areas, such as providing vulnerable farmers with cash, seeds, and fertilizer to halt the growth of hunger, is needed.
Additionally, she said, mitigation measures are needed to reduce the scale of further crises, including urgent support in nutrition, health, food supply, water, sanitation, and hygiene.
She underlined the need for a collective response involving international partners, Nigerian civil society, the private sector, and the government at the state and federal levels to avert a potential disaster.