What happens when people cannot get enough nutrients into their bodies? In a world increasingly fraught by frustration over the most basic things, what obtains when people can no longer enjoy the basics?
Hunger usually breeds anger. In a world where there is often enough anger to go around, hunger is complicating what is an already difficult situation.
According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nigeria has the second highest rate of malnutrition in the world. This further indicts a country where hunger continues to pant for more victims. The Agency stated this while quoting the most recent Food Consumption and Micronutrients Survey.
Malnutrition occurs when one does not receive the current amount of nutrition. Malnutrition is on the rise among children under five as their providers continue to struggle to provide the nutrients they need.
There is a lot of hunger in the world and a lot of it comes down to inequality and insecurity. The insecurity that drives hunger is a specialized type of insecurity that targets people, their sources of income and means of livelihood all at once. It drives people to the edge, allowing them no breathing space whatsoever.
Hunger is a devastating reality for many of the world’s poorest people. Millions of people around the world face hunger daily.
Food insecurity is a war which rages in many lives around the world. Many children have to cry themselves to sleep every day out of hunger, with many of them being targets.
One of the saddest facts about malnutrition, which is itself a consequence of hunger, is that it is a weapon, just the way hunger is a weapon.
When people are unable to eat properly, and take in all the nutrients they need into their bodies, they become amenable to the whims and caprices of privation. In such moods, nothing is beyond them.
Malnutrition leaves children disadvantaged for life. Its severe physiological and psychological impact leaves its hapless and helpless victims playing catch-up for the rest of their lives.
Conflicts breed hunger, both directly and indirectly. In Nigeria’s Northeast and Northwest, for example, years of conflict have bred hunger. How did this happen?
When people are constantly attacked or fear constant attacks, they can no longer commit fully to their means of livelihood, any means of livelihood which in the northeast and northwest of Nigeria is majorly farming because it is simply unsafe and unacceptable.
Nigeria has enough hands and land to commit to farming to provide and guarantee food security eventually and preclude malnutrition.
Malnutrition brings with it a host of physical, psychological, physiological, and emotional problems. The immediate symptoms are poor physical or mental development; poor energy levels; hair loss; swollen legs and abdomen.
Malnutrition can immediately be addressed by improving education and sanitation, reducing poverty and directly improving food security.
Since it is clear that malnutrition in Nigeria targets the youngest and most vulnerable demographic with the chief aim of setting them on the path of a difficult life, it must be tackled headlong.
The war in Ukraine which has ramped up the prices of food worldwide has left many on the brink. In the Horn of Africa, the war in Ukraine has combined with deadly droughts to leave as many as 20 million people at the risk of starvation.
Malnutrition may be a mark of hunger, but it is undeniably a mark of inequality. This stamp of inequality and injustice is rendered uglier by the fact that it stains children more than other demographics.
To arrest the alarming surge of malnutrition in Nigeria and elsewhere, those who live on the breadline should be supported to have adequate access to food that meet their nutritional demands.
Invariably, communities and families must be supported to get enough food and meet their nutritional needs. This means multiple and mindful investment in agriculture and efforts to reduce the effects of climate change.
It means deliberate efforts to empower women and children and bridge the inequality gap.
Fighting malnutrition is a battle that has to be won for many innocent but vulnerable children who have known little but hunger and lack in their short time on earth.
Winning the battle will take many sacrifices. The world must be willing to make these sacrifices.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com
