By: Olugbenga Eyimofe, Adepoju Adebola, Emiola Samson and Olaniran Adenike

WHEN U.S. funding to World Food Programme-supported nutrition clinics dried up in 2025, communities began finding local ways to sustain nutrition services, from women’s savings groups pooling resources to volunteers screening children and mothers producing nutrient-dense Tom Brown flour from local grains. As we commemorate World Humanitarian Day today, 19 August 2026, the crisis facing Nigeria’s North-East raises a difficult question: what happens when humanitarian aid begins to shrink? With millions of children still needing life-saving nutrition treatment in 2026, Nigeria must decide whether to invest in sustainable, community-led solutions or continue relying on international aid that may no longer be there.

The scale of the crisis: The numbers are staggering. According to Cadre Harmonisé 2026, 34.7 million Nigerians face acute food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, the worst hunger levels recorded in a decade. In Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) states alone, 1 in 3 people requires humanitarian assistance. Nearly 3 million children under five are projected to suffer life-threatening severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in 2026; 1 million are concentrated in BAY states, which carry two-thirds of the national wasting burden.

This crisis is no longer confined to the North-East. The May 2026 abduction of pupils and teachers from schools in Oriire Local Government Area, Oyo State, was a reminder that no region is fully insulated from insecurity that disrupts food systems and children’s nutrition. Still, the epicentre remains the conflict-affected North-East, where sixteen years of armed conflict and displacement have dismantled farming systems.

The system that works: Nigeria’s most under-celebrated public health achievement is the Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition (IMAM) strategy, delivered in communities through the Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM). Rather than waiting for severely malnourished children to reach hospitals, a path that often comes too late, CMAM brings treatment to communities through outpatient care, home-based management and ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF), supported by trained health workers and community volunteers. Hadiza Ibrahim understands this system from the ground. She lives in Mafa, Borno State, where she works as a community volunteer screening about 40 children a day for malnutrition, walking between households with a MUAC tape. With a simple hand-held measuring device to catch danger signs before they turn life-threatening.

She counsels mothers on nutrition and infant feeding, and connects caregivers to peer-support networks where knowledge and psychosocial support are shared. Hadiza does this work in a conflict-affected community, often under extraordinary odds, for minimal compensation. Yet her work saves lives. The results speak for themselves. Between 2021 and 2023, with dedicated funding from the Italian Government and UNICEF, Nigeria’s CMAM programme achieved something remarkable: 12,000 severely malnourished children treated across Borno and Yobe states, a 95 percent recovery rate, and 60,000 caregivers trained in infant and young child feeding practices. More than 54,000 children received micronutrient supplements. That is not international rescue, that is local excellence.

The funding cliff: But when U.S. funding to WFP nutrition clinics stopped in 2025, services collapsed. By mid-2026, WFP could reach only 740,000 of 6.2 million food-insecure people across three North-East states, a 43 percent drop in coverage.

Not because Nigerians lost the ability to treat malnutrition.

Not because community volunteers and health workers forgot how to save children. Because the money evaporated.

Nationally, Nigeria’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan received only 16 percent of required funding by August 2025. The nutrition sector faces a $73.2 million shortfall for 2026 alone. Meanwhile, informal local structures such as VSLAs, community volunteers, peer-support networks continue to absorb the gap, operating without formal recognition or direct financing.

The path forward: On World Humanitarian Day 2025, Nigeria’s government and the UN made a commitment: transition the aid operation to become more locally-led. That was the right commitment as community-based nutrition systems work. The evidence is unambiguous: when adequately re-sourced, 90-95 percent of children with severe wasting can be treated safely in the community. But commitment without funding is rhetoric. The question now is whether Nigeria will resource and implement what it committed to. Success will be measured by whether children like those Hadiza screens keep recovering, whether communities stay resilient after the headlines fade, and whether local nutrition responders are formally recognised and paid for their work.

Nigeria’s federal and state governments must move nutrition financing from donor dependence into the 2027 budget, through a domestic nutrition emergency fund, integration of community-based nutrition into primary health care with budgeted stipends, and legislated minimum budget allocations for humanitarian nutrition in conflict-affected states. This is not expensive. It is cheaper than managing preventable malnutrition crises. And it works.

That is what locally-led, well-resourced humanitarian response looks like. That is the enduring promise of global solidarity. And that is the legacy World Humanitarian Day should leave us with, not charity extended from abroad, but dignity restored at home.

•Eyimofe, Adebola, Samson and Adenike are of the Department of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Ibadan,