Hundreds of thousands of children will be at risk of dying from starvation in northeast Nigeria after a network of nutrition clinics closes next month, the UN has warned.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has already had to close half of its 300 nutrition centres in the conflict-racked region because of a major funding shortfall, and it will have to close the remaining 150 in September, when the last of its budget is set to run out.
The Rome-based agency has said it is facing a 40 per cent slump in donations in 2025 compared to last year, largely as a result of sweeping US aid cuts. The shortfall threatens its feeding programmes in 28 crisis zones around the world, from Gaza and Sudan to Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While the WFP has been scrambling to find new donors and reorganising budgets to keep its nutrition clinics open as long as possible, it simply doesn’t have the resources to keep them all open.
The WFP told The Telegraph that at least 630,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition in northeast Nigeria, with 280,000 more suffering from wasting, the most lethal form of the condition. If left untreated, it can cause death in weeks.
“If we stop now, we are literally allowing a death sentence for these children,” said Dr John Ala, WFP’s head of nutrition in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state.
He added that it was probable that the worst-affected children were already succumbing to hunger.
“Who knows how many have died because they could not access treatment,” he said. “The malnourished children are there but we are not reaching them.”
The WFP’s network of nutrition clinics – often little more than small wards inside health facilities where babies, children and sometimes their mothers are assessed for signs of malnourishment before being stabilised and treated with therapeutic foods – covers three states in Nigeria’s northeast: Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
The Islamist group Boko Haram, which gained global notoriety for the high-profile kidnappings of hundreds of schoolgirls, has destabilised all three states, adding to underlying issues like deep-rooted poverty which are driving a hunger crisis.
The high rates of internal displacement and grinding poverty means that, though there is food available, few can afford to buy enough of it, and often have to rely on one inadequate meal a day.
At a clinic in central Maiduguri, Maryam Ibrahim, a 25-year-old mother of two, cradles her severely malnourished eight-month-old daughter Amina in her lap.
Ms Ibrahim brought Amina to the stabilisation centre when her stomach began to swell with oedema, a symptom of malnutrition caused by a lack of protein that leads to fluid retention.
“If this clinic shuts down, a lot of people will lose hope because the access and care we have here has been saving a lot of children,” she said, adding that her family can only afford to eat one meal a day of tuwo, a thick, starchy porridge made from ground up grains that’s meant to be eaten with a soup.
As a malnourished child’s symptoms deteriorate, the window for treatment shrinks.
“Most of the children who die present late,” said Dr Ala, adding that many arrive at the clinics unconscious, and lacking even the energy to keep their vital organs functioning.
This severely weakened state can also lead to respiratory distress, diarrhoea and vomiting, which take a further toll on the body.
It’s a painful and drawn out process that – if help is not reached in time – ends with the body shutting down completely.
Children that survive often continue to feel the effects of starvation for the rest of their lives.
Research suggests that without a sufficient energy supply in the first 1,000 days of life, the growth of a child can be impaired, causing irreversible physical and cognitive damage known as stunting.
A few beds down, Bintu Modu, 30, said she rushed her son to the facility when he was no longer able to consume food and started to lose weight rapidly.
Local traditional healers said Baba, two-years-old, was “being attacked spiritually” when he first began to suffer with a fever and watery diarrhoea, she said.
“I was very scared that my child might die,” said Ms Modu, adding that she became so desperate to see her son recover that she was prepared to try the “herbal remedies” of the healers – often a concoction of leaves that can be a danger in itself.
“It is sad for me to see him in this condition,” she said. “He used to be active and would often jump up to welcome me … now, he cannot even stand up on his feet.”
Dr Ala described the situation in north east Nigeria as a “nine out of ten” catastrophe, calling it a “multi-dimensional crisis” that had dealt “back-to-back” blows to the region.
Insecurity has uprooted over 3.9 million people across the north east over the last decade, with many still living in informal settlements without access to farms or jobs.
The region was then hit by the worst floods in a decade last September, when a dam just over 10 miles south of Maiduguri collapsed in the middle of the night, killing at least 1,000 people and making thousands more homeless.
Dr Ayoade Alakija, World Health Organization (WHO) special envoy and Nigeria’s former Chief Humanitarian Coordinator, said: “This is not a new problem, this is today’s iteration.”
At the heart of the crisis is a persistent economic and social divide between Nigeria’s north and south.
The split dates back more than a century, when British colonisers fused the predominantly Muslim north with the Christian south, two regions with deeply-rooted and contrasting religious and ethnic identities.
The north, home to 65 per cent of Nigeria’s poorest people, persistently ranks lower than the south on nearly all social indicators, including poverty, illiteracy and school enrolment.
With polygamy and child marriage commonplace, and fertility rates often exceeding an average of seven children per woman, already limited health, education and social services are stretched thin, trapping communities in cycles of underdevelopment.
The north west has its own hunger crisis. Like in the north east, it is linked to insecurity, in this case banditry and clashes over land rights between farmers and nomadic herders.
Last month, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that the number of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Katsina state, the epicentre of the crisis, had surged by 208 per cent compared to the same period last year.
Between January and June 2025, 652 children in Katsina died of malnutrition after funding cuts disrupted access to treatment, it added.
These crises have been playing out in a country which is one of Africa’s richest.
Despite its vast oil wealth and booming megacities like Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria is still heavily dependent on foreign aid to feed its population.
Though it has Africa’s fourth largest economy, more than 40 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty.
Amid rampant corruption, successive governments have failed to address the growing hunger crisis in the north.
In its latest annual budget, the current government allocated just 1.7 per cent of spending to agriculture and food security, even though the sector supports 35 per cent of Nigeria’s labour force and contributes 22 per cent of its GDP.
In June, it launched the Strategic Board of Nutrition, calling it a “war room to battle against malnutrition in every corner of the country,” but has yet to lay out a clear strategy, budget or leadership structure for the initiative.
“The problem is systemic. It has been going on for a long time, and we need Nigerian solutions to Nigeria’s problems,” said Dr Alakija, the WHO special envoy.
“We don’t need committees. We don’t need councils … we need to feed children. And the only way is to have security within our country.”
Back at the nutrition clinic in Maiduguri, 25-year-old Falmata Bukar said that, as a mother, the hardest thing for her has been the struggle to provide food for her four children.
When her youngest son fell ill with malnutrition and couldn’t eat, the stress was unbearable and she found herself unable to eat either.
“If this clinic didn’t exist, my family would’ve suffered,” she said.
But she added that she was now optimistic for the future.
“The fact that tomorrow may be better gives me hope. At least today, my child is getting healthcare.”
Discussion about this post