5.1m persons face food shortage in Northeast – Report

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said 5.1 million Nigerians are facing acute food shortage in the Northeast especially in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

The organisation in its recent report also said 1.77 million are now Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the region due to activities of insurgents.

FAO said it is targeting 1.9 million of such persons in its feeding and agricultural empowerment programmes this year with an appeal for $62 million for its 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan for Nigeria.

The organization said a special alert it received last December noted that “a famine is likely ongoing and will continue in inaccessible areas of Borno State assuming conditions remain the same. The alert also noted that the current response is insufficient to meet needs.”

In a statement from the FAO Representative (interim) in Abuja, Nourou Macki Tall, the organisation said from the $62 million it is expecting, FAO will use $20 million to reach the 1.9 million people during the June planting season. “Missing this season will mean food insecurity and, therefore, humanitarian costs will continue rising into 2018,” it said.

FAO said its dry season campaign is on-going, with 174,400 people receiving vegetable seed, irrigation equipment and livestock support. It quoted the October 2016 Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis to note that less than a quarter of households in Borno State had produced crops in 2016, while onefifth of families reported having no livelihood source and almost threequarters were deploying crisis coping strategies.

Giving its funding report for 2016, FAO said it used $7.2 million for the Northeast which it got from Belgium, the EU, FAO internal resources, Irish Aid, Japan among other international donors.