Nigeria’s hunger crisis is worsening and the country’s ranking has plunged to 115th out 123 countries globally, data from the 2025 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows.
From a position of 110th and a ‘serious food crisis’ point of 28.8 amongst 123 countries in 2024, Nigeria plunged deeper into the serious food crisis zone a year later.
The data reveals that Africa’s most populous nation has been within the serious food crisis range in the last 17 years, rising only slightly from 32.3 points in 2008 to 32.8 points in 2025.
The GHI is a tool that measures and tracks hunger at global, regional, and national levels. It is an annual report published jointly by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilf.
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Between 2020 and 2024, 11.6 percent of children in the country now suffer from high levels of child wasting, 10.5 percent of the same population die before they turn five, according to the GHI 2025 report.
It links killings of farmers, exceptional heavy rainfall and devastating floods that ravaged farms in the early parts of this year to be a major driver of food insecurity.
Several Nigerians, including farmers across major food producing states were victims of flood that wiped out large hectares of farms and rendered thousands of people homeless.
“The 20th edition of the Global Hunger Index comes at a moment of rising alarm about food security globally and in certain regions and hotspots. Development finances are under extreme stress, the humanitarian sector is struggling, and in some areas hunger is persistent or even growing,” the report wrote.
The data noted that Nigeria is the second country in West Africa within the ‘serious food crisis’ zone.
