"We're Not Different From Beggars Now" - Women In Northern Nigeria

Translated from pidgin English

Nigeria‘s inflation and insecurity are worsening child hunger in the north.

“On days when I find food, the babies can eat, but on days I don’t get to eat, they will just suck,” said Murja, a married Hausa woman in her mid-twenties with two small children to keep alive.
Murja lives in a rural area near Katsina City in northern Nigeria. She recently adopted another child, seven-month-old Ummi, her niece, after Ummi’s mother died. Since then, both babies have been struggling. Murja said her older child was trying to learn how to walk but has given up because of hunger.
The family has no electricity and lives in the middle of bushland in a house made of sand blocks. It has no ventilation and is very hot. Murja survives on one small meal a day, which has reduced her breast milk supply.
“It pains me to see other children looking chubby and healthy, but Ummi just keeps getting smaller by the day,” she said.

Acute malnutrition

The scale of malnutrition across northern Nigeria is devastating and unprecedented, with 4.4 million children under five, and nearly 600,000 pregnant women acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.
The situation is rapidly escalating: the number of acutely malnourished children has more than doubled since this time last year, according to WFP.
Médecins Sans Frontières’s Medical Director, Catherine Van Overloop, said that in some northern regions, malnutrition cases have almost doubled. “These children could face developmental and cognitive issues,” she said, warning of the long-term impact. “They may not reach their full potential height; their brains may not fully develop; they may have issues concentrating in school. And these are the future of Nigeria, these children.”

Bandits have seized everything

“Bandits invaded my home and seized our farm,” said Jamila, a farmer in her late twenties, while speaking at an MSF malnutrition clinic in Katsina.
Several days earlier, Jamila brought her baby son Aliyu to the malnutrition clinic in desperation. She said his body was swollen and the hospital could not help him. “We’re no different from beggars now, the bandits have seized everything. My previous life was very good, we used to sell our harvests and also eat from the farm,” she said. On many days, the mother of three survives on cassava flakes.
Like Jamila, most people in Katsina are farmers who have been driven off their land and lost their livelihoods.
“I had so much before – maize, guinea-corn, cotton, and many cattle,” said Alhaji Abubakar, who lives in an informal IDP camp area with his 23 children and three wives after being forced off his land by bandits. The large family lives together in one house with only one toilet and little privacy. They can only afford to eat once a day. “For someone who used to give away food, now I am the one being assisted with food, that is enough reason for my heart to explode,” he said.
The unofficial camp where he lives also houses hundreds of other internally displaced people from Katsina State. Poor living conditions across other similar camps have led to outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and measles, according to aid group Smiling Heart Initiative International. “I really wish the government could help us fix the security issues so we can go back to our farm. That would make me very happy,” Mr. Abubakar said.