Serving trouble on all fronts
Northern Nigeria faces a severe crisis as bandit attacks escalate while aid support shrinks, causing mass displacement and hunger.
Nigeria’s northern regions are facing a worsening humanitarian and security crisis as escalating bandit attacks intersect with shrinking aid support. In the northeast, the UN World Food Programme warned that thousands of displaced people in Borno State face the risk of catastrophic food shortages for the first time in nearly a decade, after funding cuts forced the scaling back of nutrition programmes. The agency said more than 300,000 children have lost access to support, compounding the impact of years of insurgency and displacement. In the northwest, insecurity continues to drive displacement and loss of life. Armed bandits abducted scores of worshippers during attacks on churches in Kaduna State, while separate ambushes in Zamfara State killed five soldiers and a police officer responding to earlier violence. Authorities say poor infrastructure and difficult terrain are hampering security operations, even as the military reports fresh offensives against militant groups.
The latest developments in northern Nigeria are emblematic of a crisis that is no longer just about security; it is a multidimensional threat to the very foundations of human development and national cohesion. In Borno State, the humanitarian alarm raised by the UN World Food Programme marks a dangerous tipping point. More than 300,000 children now risk losing access to critical nutrition support for the first time in nearly a decade, driven not only by persistent insurgency but by a sharp contraction in international aid. The implications are generational. Childhood malnutrition directly undermines cognitive development, school readiness, and long-term productivity, eroding years of human capital investment before it can yield returns.
This humanitarian collapse is unfolding alongside deepening insecurity across the northwest. The mass abduction of worshippers in Kurmin Wali village in Kajuru local government area of Kaduna State on 18 January 2026 illustrates the scale and audacity of bandit operations. Gunmen on motorcycles attacked three churches during morning services, blocked escape routes, and abducted at least 163 people after initial escapes. The incident underscores how forested terrain, the absence of checkpoints, and poor rural infrastructure continue to neutralise rapid security response. In much of rural Kaduna, unpaved and flood-prone roads mean security teams can take hours to reach attack sites, while overstretched troops operate from distant urban bases such as Kachia, allowing bandits to retreat quickly into dense vegetation.
The result is a widening displacement crisis. Since 2024, nearly 290,000 people have been displaced across 12 local government areas in Kaduna State, with entire communities abandoned and farms left idle. In 2025 alone, at least 156 kidnapping incidents pushed more than 200,000 residents into informal camps or urban slums as families fled repeated village burnings and livestock theft. While Kaduna’s displacement figures remain lower than Borno’s, where about 1.7 million people remain internally displaced by Boko Haram violence, the spread of banditry across the northwest is faster and more diffuse, scattering populations into neighbouring states and compounding humanitarian strain.
These security failures have direct economic and developmental consequences. Insecurity disrupts agriculture, stalls local commerce, weakens governance, and accelerates poverty. Education suffers acutely. School closures following abductions and threats remain uneven, with many institutions in Niger and Kaduna states still shut despite official reopening directives. Parents and teachers are being asked to shoulder risks the state cannot adequately mitigate. Over time, this will depress literacy, raise dropout rates, and widen gender disparities, particularly for girls. From a Human Development Index perspective, the outlook is bleak. Life expectancy, education outcomes, and income levels in affected states are set to deteriorate, reversing already fragile gains.
The crisis is further aggravated by global aid dynamics. Cuts by major donors, including the United States under its America First posture and Britain’s reallocation of spending toward defence, halved World Food Programme budgets in 2025. Nutrition support for hundreds of thousands of children in northeastern Nigeria has been scaled back as donors prioritise competing crises elsewhere. In Borno, parts of the population face phase-five hunger risks, with at least 15,000 people at the brink of famine. As banditry disrupts supply routes in the northwest, food shortages and displacement interact, pushing vulnerable populations into already overstretched urban centres and camps.
This interplay between violence and dwindling aid exposes a strategic fault line. National security and human development are inseparable, yet donor disengagement highlights the Nigerian state’s limited capacity to fill the gap. As humanitarian space contracts, insurgents and bandits exploit desperation to recruit, tax communities, and entrench control. Regionally, instability in northern Nigeria spills across porous borders into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, complicating counterterrorism and humanitarian coordination and forcing neighbouring states and multilateral institutions to recalibrate their responses.
From a national development perspective, the consequences are catastrophic. A population weakened by hunger, fear, and displacement cannot drive growth, innovation, or social cohesion. The erosion of human capital in the north threatens Nigeria’s long-term economic prospects, particularly given the region's heavy concentration of demographic growth. Without urgent course correction, the country risks entrenching a two-speed trajectory in which insecurity and deprivation in the north drag down national productivity and legitimacy.
For policymakers, the lesson is stark. Short-term military offensives alone will not stabilise the north. What is required is a synchronised strategy that integrates sustained humanitarian relief, infrastructure investment, community-centred security operations, and governance reforms capable of restoring trust and attracting long-term investment in human capital. Without such coordination, northern Nigeria risks being locked into a generational crisis whose costs will reverberate far beyond the region, undermining the nation’s overall trajectory.