But in an interview, the top U.N. humanitarian official in the country said UN News that the current crisis extends far beyond any community or conflict. He warned that violence has spread across much of the country, leaving millions of people displaced and fueling what aid agencies describe as one of Africa’s largest (and most ignored) humanitarian emergencies.
“Security remains one of Nigeria’s main challenges,” said UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mohamed Malik Fall. “You can’t associate this with just one region anymore. It’s almost everywhere.”
A conflict that spread
The crisis began in the northeast in 2009, with an insurgency led by the jihadist group Boko Haram, which was later joined by splinter factions including the Islamic State-West Africa (ISIS-WA).
Nearly two decades later, violence has reshaped much of the country.
More than two million people remain displaced in the northeast alone, many of them for years. “An entire generation has grown up in displacement camps without knowing anything else,” Fall said.
The human cost is enormous: more than 40,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency, thousands of schools and health centers destroyed, and vast agricultural areas left inaccessible. But Fall said the deeper damage has been economic and social.
“People have been isolated from all economic activity,” he said. “They are deprived of the possibility of living from their work and preserving their dignity.”
Children walk through mud in a displaced persons camp in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria.
Non-targeted violence
What was once a localized insurgency has morphed into something broader and more diffuse.
In northwestern Nigeria – in states such as Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto – armed criminal groups have taken control of rural areas, carrying out mass kidnappings and extortion, a phenomenon that authorities describe as banditry.
Entire villages have been abandoned and around a million people are displaced in the region, according to United Nations estimates.
In the central belt of the country, clashes between farmers and herders over land, intensified by climate pressure and environmental degradation, have led to further displacement.
Elsewhere, separatist movements and attacks linked to oil production continue to destabilize communities.
The cumulative result is a country with approximately 3.5 million internally displaced people, almost 10 percent of all displacements in Africa.
A loaded claim
Recent attacks on Christian churches and schools have revived international attention. In January, more than 160 worshipers were kidnapped during Sunday services in Kaduna state.
Days earlier, northwestern villages were attacked, killing dozens, while students near a Catholic school in Papiri were attacked again.
The violence revived memories of the 2014 kidnapping of 276 Chibok schoolgirls, most of them Christians, by Boko Haram, a moment that once galvanized global outrage.
Citing the need to protect Christians from Islamist militants, the US administration ordered airstrikes on Christmas Day against jihadist positions in northern Nigeria. Since then, in Washington, some officials have argued that a “Christian genocide” is underway.
The UN refrains from making that characterization.
“I wouldn’t take that step if I attributed this violence to the selective persecution of a religious group,” Fall said. “The vast majority of the more than 40,000 people who died in the insurgency are Muslims. They were attacked and killed in mosques.”
He pointed to an attack in Maiduguri, the historic center of the insurgency, carried out on Christmas Eve in an area “between a mosque and a market,” in which Muslim worshipers were killed as they left their prayers.
“Insecurity affects everyone, regardless of religion or ethnicity,” he said, warning that oversimplified narratives risk deepening social fractures rather than addressing their causes.
Internally displaced mothers with their children attend a WFP famine assessment exercise in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria.
A crisis measured in millions
Behind the violence lies a humanitarian emergency of enormous scale. In the northeastern states alone, 7.2 million people need assistance, almost six million of them in serious or critical condition, according to UN figures.
Food insecurity has become the defining threat. Aid agencies project that up to 36 million Nigerians could face varying levels of food insecurity in the coming months. Among children under five, more than 3.5 million are at risk of acute malnutrition.
“The consequences are not only immediate,” Fall said. “Malnutrition affects cognitive development and education and continues to shape life into adulthood.”
Climate shocks (including droughts and floods) have exacerbated the crisis, along with recurrent outbreaks of cholera and meningitis and a fragile health system.
Aid reduces as needs grow
Despite the magnitude of the emergency, funding has collapsed.
“A few years ago, Nigeria’s humanitarian response plan raised about $1 billion a year,” Fall said. “In 2024, it was $585 million. Last year, it was just $262 million. This year, we’re not even sure we’ll reach $200 million.”
The decline comes as donors’ attention has shifted to higher-profile crises elsewhere, including Ukraine and Sudan.
A test for Africa’s largest economy
Nigeria’s situation exposes a stark paradox: one of Africa’s largest economies faces a humanitarian crisis more often associated with much poorer states.
“Nigeria is not Sudan, it is not Somalia, it is not South Sudan,” Fall said. “This is a country with resources. The primary responsibility for responding to humanitarian needs lies with the government.”
The UN is now urging Nigerian federal and state authorities to take greater ownership of the response, while pressuring donors not to turn their backs.
“No one wants to live on aid,” Fall said. “People would rather receive help to access economic opportunities than remain dependent. Giving a fish is good. Teaching how to fish is better.”