With Nigeria one of 36 countries at the risk of an acute food crisis in Africa, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says it has scaled up its outreach to 1.2 million people monthly in the northeast region of the country in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to double the number of hungry people in Nigeria, Mr Onyemaobi said the food security situation in Nigeria was quite alarming even before the pandemic.

Mr Onyemaobi said COVID-19 would double the number of food insecure people in Nigeria "unless we all put heads together to extend food assistance to the most vulnerable people in our communities, towns and villages."

Current efforts

As a strategy to curtail the spread of the coronavirus disease, Mr Onyemaobi said WFP is distributing two months' of food and nutrition assistance in IDP camps and among vulnerable communities to ensure that people have sufficient food while they are on lockdown.

Hunger threat in West Africa

Meanwhile,Elisabeth Byers, the WFP spokesperson, according to a report by the United Nations (UN) website, said, in West Africa, "An additional 20 million people could struggle to feed themselves due to the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 in the next six months, doubling the number of food-insecure to 43 million in this region."