The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says about 420,000 children are likely to die of malnutrition in Nigeria.
UNICEF also stated that at least 3.5 children are currently battling with severe acute malnutrition in the country as a result of hunger, preventable diseases and lack of care.
Wafaa Elfadil Saeed Abdelatef, UNICEF Country Representative, made the observation during her visit to the Maiduguri Field Office on Thursday, saying that Nigeria has 15 million malnourished children under five.
She further explained that forty percent of under-fives are stunted children who will never reach their full physical or cognitive potential if nothing is done to arrest the situation.
Abdelatef said, "unless resources are mobilised quickly, Nigeria risks losing hundreds of thousands of children to hunger, preventable diseases, and lack of care."
For UNICEF to locally produce food solutions, and expand treatment centres to ensure that no child dies from malnutrition-related complications in the country, she explained that the organization needed money to be able to undertake its projects.
The Northeast, according to her, remains gripped by a humanitarian crisis, with over 4.5 million people in dire need of assistance.
Following Nigeria’s education crisis, Abdelatef explained that 18.3 million Nigerian children are currently out of school, stressing that 10.2 million of them are at primary school age and 8.1 million at junior secondary school age.
Every year, she said about 3.9 million fail to finish primary school, pointing out that one in three Nigerian children and 4.2 million fail to finish junior secondary school.
She noted that only 27% of children aged 7 to 14 can read with comprehension, while 75% cannot solve simple mathematics, lamenting that the education crisis is both about access and quality.
She stressed the need to support children to enroll in school and complete their studies, saying that school enrollment and retention help delay early marriage and empower girls to make informed decisions about their health and future families.
Abdelatef revealed that Nigeria has over 2.1 million zero-dose children, the highest figure in the world on immunization and child survival.
She added that nearly one in three one-year-olds has never received a single vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to deadly but preventable outbreaks such as measles, diphtheria, meningitis, and circulating variants of polioviruses.
