The numbers are gut-wrenching. In the first half of 2025 alone, 652 infants and young children have died from hunger-related illnesses in Katsina State — a toll nearly nine times higher than child hunger deaths recorded in Gaza during the same period.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealed the shocking statistics in a July 25 report, prompting outrage from human rights groups.
“This is not only happening in Katsina,” Amnesty International’s Nigeria Director, Isah Sanusi, told reporters. “We’re seeing similar crises in Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara, where children are dying and even nursing mothers have nothing to eat.”
The UNICEF report released a day earlier recorded 80 child hunger deaths in Gaza from January to June — up from 52 in 2024 — yet Katsina’s toll dwarfs this, despite being a region at peace.
UK-based human rights lawyer Bulama Bukarti called the findings “alarming” and warned that the figures do not even account for adult deaths. He blamed worsening insecurity and federal economic policies for pushing families from three meals a day to just one — or none.
For people like 45-year-old displaced mother Rabi Salisu from Safana LGA, the statistics have faces. “We can’t farm because of bandits, markets are dangerous, and attacks happen even in daylight,” she said over the phone.
The Katsina government insists it is responding, pointing to nutrition centres and health interventions in high-burden LGAs. But critics say such measures are slow and insufficient against a hunger crisis spiralling out of control.
The real question now — will this wake Nigeria up to a catastrophe unfolding in its own backyard?
