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31.8 Million Nigerians To Face Acute Food Insecurity In June, August – WFP Warns

Published

1 year ago

June 6, 2024

The World Food Price has projected that 31.8 million Nigerians (16 per cent of the population analysed) are projected to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity between June and August 2024.

WFP, in its latest June to October 2024 outlook sourced from its X account, said nearly 1 million people in the country are projected to be in a state of emergency mode of acute food insecurity.

Highlighting the five phases of food insecurity on a scale of 1 to 5, WFP explained that phase 1 represents minimal food insecurity; phase 2 stressed food insecurity; phase 3 crisis food insecurity; phase 4 emergency food insecurity and phase 5 catastrophic food insecurity.

The statement partly reads, “Between June and August 2024, 31.8 million people (16 per cent of the population analysed) are projected to face crisis or worse ( Phase 3 or above) levels of acute food insecurity, with nearly 1 million people projected to be in Emergency ( Phase 4).

“This represents a 3 percentage point increase in the number of acutely food insecure people compared to the same time in the previous year. Acute malnutrition levels remain high, above 10 per cent, in the northern states (Borno, Yobe, Sokota, Katsina and Zamfara), with 4.4 million children and 585 000 pregnant and breastfeeding women projected to be acutely malnourished in 2024.”

The statement projected that food insecurity would likely remain highly concerning, due to a multidimensional crisis driven by weakening macroeconomic conditions, heightened insecurity and subdued agricultural production in the northern part of the country.

“The security situation is likely to continue to deteriorate, exacerbating population displacement. This is a particular concern for the northern states, which have already seen an uptick in insurgency, banditry and kidnapping in the first quarter of 2024.

“Insecurity has been disrupting agricultural livelihoods and affecting the functionality of markets.321 Insecurity results in high humanitarian access constraints, particularly in the northeast, restricting the delivery of assistance to government-controlled towns and their immediate surroundings.

“This is a particular concern for the northern states, which have already seen an uptick in insurgency, banditry and kidnapping in the first quarter of 2024. The latter increased by 44 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Insecurity has been disrupting agricultural livelihoods and affecting the functionality of markets. Insecurity results in high humanitarian access constraints, particularly in the northeast, restricting the delivery of assistance to government-controlled towns and their immediate surroundings.”

WFP stated that in March 2024, the inflation rate exceeded 33 per cent year-on-year, eroding the frail purchasing power of households in a country where 38 per cent of Nigerians live below the poverty line.

“On top of that, the naira has been strongly fluctuating, registering a yearly depreciation of 60 per cent in February 2024. Due to below-average cereal production in 2023 and high transport costs, prices of major staples such as rice and maize were 105 and 241 percent higher, respectively, on a yearly basis, in February 2024.

“During the outlook, import restrictions amid abating foreign reserves, increasing farming costs, and high levels of conflict in the North East, North West and parts of the North Central zones will likely impact the 2024 agricultural season. This will cause reduced yields and elicit further inflationary pressures.”

Headline

UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

17 hours ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

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UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

Headline

King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP