Nigeria’s inflation and insecurity are worsening child hunger in the north.
“On days when I find food, the babies can eat, but on days I don’t get to eat, they will just suck,” said Murja, a married Hausa woman in her mid-twenties with two small children to keep alive.
Murja lives in a rural area near Katsina City in northern Nigeria. She recently adopted another child, seven-month-old Ummi, her niece, after Ummi’s mother died.
Since then, both babies have been struggling. Murja said her older child was trying to learn how to walk but has given up because of hunger.
The family has no electricity and lives in the middle of bushland in a house made of sand blocks. It has no ventilation and is very hot. Murja survives on one small meal a day, which has reduced her breast milk supply.
“It pains me to see other children looking chubby and healthy, but Ummi just keeps getting smaller by the day,” she said.
