The strikes thrust Nigeria\u2019s long-running sectarian bloodshed into the global spotlight \u2013 and revived claims that a \u201cChristian genocide\u201d is unfolding in Africa\u2019s most populous country.<\/p>\n
But in an interview, the UN\u2019s top humanitarian official in the country has told UN News<\/em> that the current crisis extends far beyond any single community or conflict. Violence, he cautioned, has spread across much of the country, leaving millions displaced and fuelling what aid agencies describe as one of Africa\u2019s largest \u2013 and most overlooked \u2013 humanitarian emergencies.<\/p>\n \u201cSecurity remains one of Nigeria\u2019s major challenges,\u201d said Mohamed Malik Fall, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator. \u201cYou can no longer associate it with a single region. It is almost everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n The crisis began in the northeast in 2009, with an insurgency led by the jihadist group Boko Haram, later joined by splinter factions, including the Islamic State-West Africa (ISIS-WA).\u00a0<\/p>\n Nearly two decades in, the violence has reshaped large parts of the country.<\/p>\n More than two million people remain displaced in the northeast alone, many of them for years. \u201cAn entire generation has grown up in displacement camps, knowing nothing else,\u201d Mr. Fall said.<\/p>\n The human toll is extensive: more than 40,000 people killed since the start of the insurgency, thousands of schools and health centres destroyed, and vast agricultural areas rendered inaccessible. But Mr. Fall said the deeper damage has been economic and social.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have been cut off from all economic activity,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are deprived of the ability to live from their work and preserve their dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>\n Children walk through the mud in a displaced persons camp in Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What was once a localized insurgency has morphed into something broader and more diffuse.<\/p>\n In Nigeria\u2019s northwest \u2013 in states such as Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto \u2013 armed criminal groups have seized control of rural areas, carrying out mass kidnappings and extortion, a phenomenon authorities describe as banditry.\u00a0<\/p>\n Entire villages have been abandoned, and around one million people are now displaced in the region, according to United Nations estimates.<\/p>\n In the country\u2019s central belt, clashes between farmers and herders over land, intensified by climate pressure and environmental degradation, have triggered further displacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Elsewhere, separatist movements and attacks linked to oil production continue to destabilize communities.<\/p>\n The cumulative result is a country with roughly 3.5 million internally displaced people \u2013 nearly 10 percent of all displacement across Africa.<\/p>\n Recent attacks against churches and Christian schools have revived international attention. In January, more than 160 worshippers were abducted during Sunday services in Kaduna State.\u00a0<\/p>\n Days earlier, villages in the northwest were attacked, killing dozens, while students near a Catholic school in Papiri were again targeted.<\/p>\n The violence revived memories of the 2014 abduction of 276\u00a0schoolgirls from Chibok, most of them Christian, by Boko Haram \u2013 a moment that once galvanized global outrage.<\/p>\n Citing the need to protect Christians from Islamist militants, the US administration ordered airstrikes on Christmas Day against jihadist positions in northern Nigeria. In Washington, some officials have since argued that a \u201cChristian genocide\u201d is underway.<\/p>\n The UN is refraining from that characterisation.<\/p>\n \u201cAttributing this violence to the targeted persecution of a religious group \u2013 I would not take that step,\u201d Mr. Fall said. \u201cThe vast majority of the more than 40,000 people killed in the insurgency are Muslims. They were attacked and killed in mosques.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed to an attack in Maiduguri, the historic centre of the insurgency, carried out on Christmas Eve in an area \u201cbetween a mosque and a market,\u201d which killed Muslim worshippers as they left prayers.<\/p>\n \u201cInsecurity affects everyone, without distinction of religion or ethnicity,\u201d he said, warning that oversimplified narratives risk deepening social fractures rather than addressing their causes.<\/p>\n <\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>\n \u00a9 WFP\/Arete\/Siegfried Modola<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Internally displaced mothers with their children attend a WFP famine assessment exercise in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Behind the violence lies a humanitarian emergency of enormous scale. In the northeastern states alone, 7.2 million people need assistance \u2013 nearly six million of them in severe or critical condition, according to U.N. figures.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequences are not only immediate,\u201d Mr. Fall said. \u201cMalnutrition affects cognitive development, education, and continues to shape lives well into adulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n Climate shocks \u2013 including droughts and floods \u2013 have compounded the crisis, alongside recurring cholera and meningitis outbreaks and a fragile health system.<\/p>\n Despite the scale of the emergency, funding has collapsed.<\/p>\n \u201cA few years ago, Nigeria\u2019s humanitarian response plan raised close to $1 billion annually,\u201d Mr. Fall said. \u201cIn 2024, it was $585 million. Last year, barely $262 million. This year, we are not even certain we will reach $200 million.\u201d<\/p>\n The decline comes as donor attention has shifted to higher-profile crises elsewhere, including Ukraine and Sudan.<\/p>\n Nigeria\u2019s predicament exposes a stark paradox: one of Africa\u2019s largest economies confronting a humanitarian crisis more often associated with far poorer states.<\/p>\n \u201cNigeria is not Sudan. It is not Somalia. It is not South Sudan,\u201d Mr. Fall said. \u201cThis is a country with resources. The primary responsibility for responding to humanitarian needs lies with the government.\u201d<\/p>\n The UN is now urging Nigerian federal and state authorities to take greater ownership of the response, even as it presses donors not to turn away.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one wants to live on aid,\u201d Mr. Fall said. \u201cPeople would rather be helped to access economic opportunities than remain dependent. Giving a fish is good. Teaching how to fish is better.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nA conflict that spread<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Untargeted violence<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A loaded claim<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Internally](\"https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/21-06-2022_WFP_Nigeria.jpg\/image1170x530cropped.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA crisis measured in millions<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Aid shrinks as needs grow<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A test for Africa\u2019s largest economy<\/strong><\/h2>\n