Communities in northern Nigeria have reported cases of individuals joining armed groups and bandits solely to secure food or an “income” as hunger across Nigeria’s conflict-hit northern regions reaches levels not seen in a decade due to spreading violence and shrinking humanitarian aid.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) revealed that more than 17 million people across nine conflict-affected northern states are currently experiencing crisis, emergency, or catastrophic levels of hunger.
The country has been battling a jihadist insurgency centred in the northeast since 2009, with a resurgence in violence since 2025.
Jihadists have also been expanding into the northwest, which is already facing a separate, overlapping crisis from armed “bandit” gangs.
“What concerns us most is how this crisis is expanding,” WFP regional director for west and central Africa, Kinday Samba, said in a statement.
He added that the spread of violence is “across a much wider area and forcing people from farmland, driving displacement and restricting humanitarian access”.
Aid cuts under US President Donald Trump and other western countries have hit some of Nigeria’s poorest households in recent years.
At the same time, the International Monetary Fund reported last month that poverty has risen under President Bola Tinubu, who has embarked on a raft of economic reforms supported by economists but which have also driven up prices.
As conflict in the country’s troubled north has expanded, so has the number of areas too dangerous for WFP to operate in, it said.
“The number of inaccessible locations has doubled: a further 15 areas are now considered partially inaccessible for WFP’s frontline staff,” it said.
Government control is scanty outside urban centres, leaving swathes of rural areas prone to attacks from armed groups.
‘Food security crisis worsening’“Nigeria’s food security crisis is worsening faster than previously anticipated,” it said. “Conflict is driving hunger in some northern states, particularly the northeast, to levels not seen in almost a decade”.
In Borno state, the epicentre of the jihadist conflict, more than three million people are “acutely food insecure”, including 10,000 people facing “catastrophic hunger”.