Nigeria’s Child Malnutrition Crisis Deepens As Families Struggle To Feed, Atiku Warns
By Sunday Etuka
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has called Nigeria’s rising child-malnutrition numbers a stark sign of the country’s cost-of-living crisis, cautioning that economic hardship was stunting the growth and future of millions of children, not just draining household budgets.
New data from nutrition experts shows 41.1 percent of Nigerian children under five are stunted, with 19.2 percent severely stunted, a figure that climbs to 58.2 percent in the North-West. Close to two million children face severe acute malnutrition, and only about two in ten of them are getting treatment.
Atiku, in a statement on Thursday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, tied the numbers directly to the strain that food, transport, and energy costs are placing on families.
“This is the most heart-breaking face of the cost-of-living crisis. Behind every statistic is a Nigerian mother struggling to decide what her children can eat, how much they can eat and how often they can eat,” he said. “A child does not understand inflation figures. A child only knows whether there is food on the table.”
Nigeria’s food inflation currently sits at 19.57 percent according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), adding to years of accumulated price pressure on households.
Atiku argued that fuel costs sit at the root of the problem, citing World Bank findings that higher petrol prices erode household purchasing power and ripple into the cost of transport and other goods.
“When fuel becomes expensive, transporting tomatoes from the farm becomes expensive. Taking rice to the market becomes expensive… and eventually, the additional cost arrives at the dinner table,” he said, adding that he “refuses to accept an economic philosophy” in which government watches prices rise and tells citizens to endure.
He reiterated that his proposed fix is a production subsidy tied to crude refined domestically, not a return to subsidizing imported fuel. The plan, he said, would be capped, transparently budgeted, and independently audited.
“This is not an import subsidy. If you do not refine in Nigeria, you do not qualify,” he said. “Produce here. Refine here. Create jobs here. Pay less here.”
Framing it as part of a broader affordability agenda rather than a standalone petrol policy, Atiku said lowering energy costs would ease expenses across agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and household budgets alike.
“I want the farmer to spend less getting produce to market… I want parents to have more money left after transportation so that they can put better food on the table,” he said.
He tied the malnutrition figures directly to that broader push, calling for expanded treatment for severely malnourished children, stronger maternal and child nutrition programs, and nutrition budgets that actually reach communities, alongside efforts to ease the economic pressures driving the crisis.
“We cannot build a strong country on the bodies of hungry children,” he said. “My objective is clear: lower the cost of energy, lower transportation and production costs, strengthen Nigerian production, restore purchasing power and give families breathing room again. I will make life affordable again.”
