The World Food Programme (WFP) said it has reached about 7.1 million beneficiaries through its assistance programmes in Nigeria between 2023 and 2025.
It said it assisted approximately 2.4 million people in Nigeria in 2023, while its 2024 Nigeria Annual Country Report recorded 2,378,604 actual beneficiaries. Its latest 2025 Annual Country Report put the number of beneficiaries at 2,365,792.
The figures indicated a slight decline in WFP’s annual reach between 2023 and 2025, even as humanitarian needs continued to intensify.
WFP’s 2023 Nigeria report highlighted the organisation’s broader role beyond emergency food distribution, including nutrition support, livelihood interventions and resilience-building activities.
The agency said it delivered integrated nutrition, life-saving assistance and livelihood support to 2.4 million people during the year, supported more than 1,700 communal livelihood assets and provided resilience support to 55,198 smallholder farmers, 59 per cent of whom were women.
It also reported that 95 per cent of the food distributed to vulnerable people through its activities in conflict-affected areas was locally purchased, representing more than $75.6 million in expenditure.
In 2024, WFP recorded 1,829,991 beneficiaries under unconditional resource transfers, while 637,747 people benefited from malnutrition treatment programmes and 625,637 from malnutrition prevention programmes.
The report also recorded 73,573 beneficiaries under smallholder agricultural market support programmes and 47,750 under asset-creation and livelihood activities.
WFP said its unconditional resource transfers in 2024 provided food assistance through in-kind and cash-based modalities to about 1.8 million people, including pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls.
Children aged six to 23 months also received additional nutrition assistance under the programme.
The 2025 report showed that the humanitarian operation remained heavily concentrated among internally displaced people. Of the 2,365,792 beneficiaries recorded during the year, 1,452,849 were internally displaced persons, while 912,943 were residents. The report recorded no returnee beneficiaries during the year.
The continued humanitarian needs came against the backdrop of worsening food insecurity projections.
The October 2025 Cadre Harmonisé analysis, led by the Federal Government with support from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), WFP, UNICEF and other partners, projected that 34.7 million Nigerians could face acute food insecurity during the June-August 2026 lean season if timely interventions were not implemented.
The assessment estimated that 27.2 million people were already facing hunger at the time of the analysis.
An earlier Cadre Harmonisé assessment had projected that 30.6 million people in 26 states and the Federal Capital Territory would face Crisis-level or worse food insecurity during the June-August 2025 lean season. This followed an earlier projection of 33.1 million people for the same period, highlighting the changing nature of Nigeria’s food-security situation.
In November 2024, WFP warned that economic hardship, climate shocks and conflict could push 33.1 million Nigerians into acute food insecurity in 2025.
The agency said 25.1 million people were already likely to be experiencing acute food insecurity between October and December 2024, despite the period coinciding with the peak harvest season.
WFP’s 2025 country report said the latest Cadre Harmonisé results represented the highest levels of food insecurity recorded since the analysis began in Nigeria, with up to 34.7 million people potentially facing acute food insecurity during the 2026 lean season.