The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has said that from August 2017 to August 2019, the number of persons facing severe food insecurity in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa had dropped from 5.2 million to 2.9 million.
The FAO Representative in Nigeria, Suffyan Koroma disclosed this in Abuja during the presentation of October 2019 Cadre Harmonise (CH) Analysis Outcome for 16 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
According to him “as we await the presentation of the outcome of this October analysis, let me remind you of the result of the Updated March 2019 analysis.
“The projections show that the number of people facing acute food insecurity in the Boko Haram ravaged Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states has significantly reduced from 5.2 million (June‒August 2017) to 2.9million (June‒August 2019).
“The improvement has largely been due to the efforts of government and massive intervention of the humanitarian communities, without which the situation would have worsened”.
He explained that Cadre Harmonisѐ (CH) has been a regional framework for the consensual analysis of acute food insecurity situations across the West Africa countries.
The exercise which according to him started in 2015 has now been adopted by the Nigeria Food Security stakeholders as an early warning tool for preventing food crisis.
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He said FAO would continue to work with her partners in the provision of livelihood assistance to the vulnerable group identified through this process.
“I am also pleased to note the emergence of a new crop of smart and skilled analysts from diverse backgrounds (16 Federal CH Cells and over 50 from State CH cells and other NGOs) that the CH exercise in Nigeria has produced in the last three years.
“I am confident that with these bunch of active human resources, the government of Nigeria will not only continue to sustain the conduct of CH analysis but also put in place measures to institutionalize the CH process as part of the early warning system in the country”, Koroma added.
In his remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Mohammed Umar said CH analysis has been adopted as the most acceptable and informative tool used for classifying states into the five phases of food nutrition and insecurity, including estimated population affected by acute food nutrition and insecurity challenges across the 17 participating northern states and the FCT.
He, however, expressed hope that the outcome from this current analysis would provide information on the prevailing acute food and nutrition security going from the last CH analysis released in March 2019 and the updated outcome for the Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe state in June 2019.
He reiterated that attaining food and nutrition security remains the cardinal objective of the government and as such the Ministry remains resolute in supporting initiative geared towards attaining this mandate.
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