Nigeria: 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (January 2026)

1.1 Crisis Overview

Sixteen years of armed conflict, devastating flooding, disease outbreaks, the lack of access to basic services and poverty are making millions of Nigerians profoundly vulnerable. Severe food insecurity and malnutrition are endemic. In Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) states, some 5.9 million people will be challenged by severe to extreme needs (severity level 3, 4 and 5), with the most critical priority are those experiencing catastrophic and life-threatening needs, who must be targeted first for immediate, life-saving intervention, out of a total of an estimated 7.3 million people who will require some form of assistance. Non-state armed groups (NSAGs) have increased attacks on the military but are also increasingly targeting civilians. Some 4,000 civilians were killed in the first eight months of 2025, compared to the same number killed in the whole of 2023. Beyond the reported fatalities, civilians across the BAY States continue to face a protection crisis marked by abductions, gender-based violence, forced recruitment, extortion, widespread exposure to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and other grave violations.

The crisis increases morbidity and mortality for women, men, girls, and boys in different ways. Women and girls face heightened risks of sexual and gender-based violence, early marriage, and loss of livelihoods, and are forced to adopt negative coping mechanisms. Men and boys often suffer forced recruitment, arbitrary detention, and are forced to adopt dangerous coping strategies. Food insecurity and lack of livelihoods often means that many will have to engage in risky behavior to survive, such as farming or seeking livelihoods far from the relative safety of garrison towns. Malnutrition is a devastating challenge nationwide. Every day, hundreds of thousands of Nigerian children are at a heightened risk of death, and millions are suffering from long-term debilitating effects like stunting and wasting due to food insecurity, poverty, inadequate diets, poor hygiene, and limited access to essential health services across multiple states. In the northeast of Nigeria, the malnutrition crisis is particularly acute, where it is estimated that at least 75 children face death every single day if they do not receive urgent therapeutic care. Families watch their children waste away while violence, destroying farmland, and soaring food prices challenge their ability to cope.

Similarly, the northwest of Nigeria is plagued by extreme levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, and acute protection needs. Violence from armed criminals is displacing hundreds of thousands of people. In many locations, efforts to relocate internally displaced persons (IDPs) to safer areas have been repeatedly foiled by persistent insecurity, with relocation sites frequently targeted or attacked, undermining protection gains and forcing further displacement. In the middlebelt, intercommunal conflict and conflict between farmers and herders are displacing tens of thousands and killing scores of people.

Across northern Nigeria, multidimensional poverty is affecting the vast majority of the population – more than 90 per cent in rural areas. The lack of access to basic services means that people are extremely vulnerable to shocks such as conflict, disease outbreaks, and natural disasters. Country-wide, the impact of climate change is compounding vulnerability. In 2024, more than 5 million people were impacted by flooding countrywide. In addition to killing close to a thousand people and displacing hundreds of thousands, the floods also destroyed crops that could
have fed 13 million people for a year.

Demographic changes and rapid population growth at around 3 per cent per year, on top of a reduction in funding, means that access to basic services is likely to continue to deteriorate in the short to medium term. Similarly, it can also lead to increased conflict over resources. Some of the areas that are most likely impacted by climate change – particularly flooding, i.e., in riverine and coastal areas, are often the areas where growing populations mean increased exposure to risk.Safe and sustained humanitarian access in these contexts, depends on adequately resourced enabling services: road movements are often high risk due to insecurity and explosive hazards, and helicopter access is essential in many locations.