By Ben Ezeamalu
LAGOS, Nigeria, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Thousands of people in Nigeria’s strife-torn northeast are facing the risk of catastrophic food shortages for the first time in nearly a decade, as aid cuts deepen malnutrition across the region, the U.N. World Food Programme warned on Friday.
Around 15,000 people are at risk in Borno state, the agency said, an area already struggling with years of militant unrest.
Across West and Central Africa, 55 million people are facing severe food shortages, with more than three quarters of the people affected in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, it added.
The U.N. body did not pick out specific funding but agencies have been raising the alarm since the Trump administration started reducing aid as part of its “America First” policy last year, and Britain and others cut aid budgets to boost spending on defence.
More than 13 million children in the region were projected to suffer malnutrition this year, the WFP said.
Conflict, displacement and economic pressures have driven food insecurity for years, but cuts to humanitarian assistance were now pushing vulnerable communities beyond their ability to cope, the statement added.
“The reduced funding we saw in 2025 has deepened hunger and malnutrition across the region,” Sarah Longford, WFP’s deputy regional director for West and Central Africa, said.
Funding shortfalls in 2025 had already forced WFP to scale back nutrition programmes in Nigeria, affecting more than 300,000 children, after the agency warned that nearly 35 million people could go hungry as its resources ran out in December.
Elsewhere, insecurity in Mali has disrupted food supply routes, leaving 1.5 million people facing crisis levels of hunger, while more than half a million people in Cameroon risk being cut off from aid in the coming weeks, the statement said.
The U.N. agency said it needed more than $453 million over the next six months to continue providing humanitarian assistance across the region.
(Writing by Ben Ezeamalu; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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