The World Food Program (WFP), an arm of the United Nations, warned on Tuesday parts of Nigeria may face unprecedented hunger in the most perilous parts of the upcoming year, leaving as many as 35 million people facing “severe food insecurity.”
The WFP blamed attacks by “insurgent groups” and “economic stress” as the main drivers of this potential famine, naming several jihadist organizations but omitting the genocidal nature of their attacks on indigenous Christian communities in the country. The U.N. report also did not mention the Fulani “herdsmen” jihadists as a factor in the calamity befalling Nigerian Christians – whose attacks in the Middle Belt of the country are considered among the deadliest – nor the identity of many of the victims.
“Growing instability across northern Nigeria, including a surge in attacks, is driving hunger to levels never seen before,” a WFP press release declared on Tuesday.
“Northern Nigeria is experiencing the most severe hunger crisis in a decade with rural farming communities the hardest hit,” it continued. “Nearly six million people in the north are projected to face crisis levels of hunger or worse during the 2026 lean season – June to August – in the conflict zones of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. This includes some 15,000 people in Borno State who are expected to confront catastrophic hunger (Phase 5, famine-like conditions).”
On its website, the WFP stated that projections estimate 35 million people in Nigeria will face “severe food insecurity” during what is known as the “lean” season of the year, a time in the summer prior to the harvest where food supplies dwindle. The WFP described the causes of this impending catastrophe as “conflict, climate shocks, displacement and the systemic collapse of local food systems.”
The 35 million number was sourced from an annual report titled the “Cadre Harmonisé Fiche: Acute Food and Nutrition Insecurity Analysis” by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a United Nations research agency. The agency and its partners released their annual findings on October 31, warning that over 55 percent of households nationwide were maintaining “acceptable” levels of food consumption by significantly compromising on the quality and nutritional value of the food. Included in this percentage were households simply skipping meals to guarantee future food supplies.
Nigeria has faced over a decade of brutal, genocidal persecution of its Christian population by various Islamist terrorist groups.
The WFP listed among the major threats “Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate” and “the insurgent group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP),” formerly known as Boko Haram (a splinter group from ISWAP still refers to itself as Boko Haram, rejecting allegiance to the global ISIS movement). While Boko Haram/ISWAP remain a major threat in the majority-Muslim northeast, the Middle Belt states, where the Muslim north meets the Christian south, the Fulani “herdsmen” terrorist group presents the deadliest threat to locals, many of them indigenous Christian communities.
“The evidence of targeted violence against Christians in Nigeria is well documented. In October, the Islamist group connected with ISIS sent a clear message about their intention to target Christians in Africa declaring they must convert or die,” Ryan Brown, the CEO of the Christian humanitarian organization Open Doors, told Breitbart News this month. “Last year alone, 3,100 of the 4,476 Christians killed worldwide for their faith were in Nigeria. Nigeria also leads globally in Christians abducted for faith reasons.”
“Across Nigeria in recent years, on average there have been 8 violent attacks per day. The Middle Belt, particularly Benue and Plateau state, continues to experience frequent deadly attacks,” he observed.
International observers and Nigerian government officials have often denied the religious element to these attacks, in which Fulani terrorists, often on motorcycles and heavily armed, lay siege to villages, burning down churches and abducting women and girls en masse. Some have claimed that, as the Fulani Muslims tend to be herders, and the Christians farmers, the conflict is fueled by competition for serviceable land, which climate alarmists claim is increasingly scarce. The WFP did not name the systematic targeting of Christian farmers as a factor in its predicted food crisis.
Christians in the Middle Belt have rejected the climate change explanation.
“They are very powerful, they have all the monies, they have all the connections, they have people in the U.N., they have people in all the prominent embassies in the world,” Father Remigius Ihyula, a Catholic priest in Benue state, told Breitbart News in 2023, referring to the pro-Islamist advocates. “They tell them that it [the jihadist violence] is climate change – I mean for heaven’s sake, climate change, is not confined to Nigeria.”
“People in the U.S. are not killing people because there is climate change,” he objected. “Only in Nigeria [is it] that people are displaced … in the name of climate change and nobody wants the truth to be said, and when you say the truth you become a target.”
President Donald Trump declared Nigeria Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious liberty on October 31, warning that Christians face “an existential threat” in the country and urging President Bola Tinubu to act.
“The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!” Trump announced at the time.
Trump’s call for global support to Nigeria’s Christians has received support from the Vatican, where Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly urged Catholics to pray for the persecuted Church in that country.
The Nigerian government has repeatedly denied the religious element of the crisis. Following the CPC designation, President Tinubu issued a statement proclaiming, “the characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality.” Tinubu’s government has treated Trump’s words as a threat, taking little kinetic action against the jihadists.
Following a wave of abductions of schoolgirls in the past week, the Nigerian government shut down all schools in multiple states, rather than provide security. The move outraged Nigerian women’s rights leaders, who issued a statement on Tuesday accusing the government of capitulating to the jihadists.
“Instead of responding with strategy, urgency, and courage, we are witnessing decisions that reflect panic rather than protection,” the group Voices for Inclusion and Equity for Women condemned in their statement. “Every shuttered classroom widens inequality; every child kept at home deepens fear. This is not protection; it is abandonment.”
“Schools must be protected, not emptied. We reject policies that punish children for the State’s failures,” the statement concluded.
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