Urgent Call for Aid: Tackling Nigeria's Humanitarian Crisis in 2025 + Investors Beware!!!
Urgent Call for Aid: Tackling Nigeria's Humanitarian Crisis in 2025
The United Nations has estimated that $910 million is required to fund the Nigeria 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan to support 7.8 million people needing humanitarian assistance. Among them, 3.6 million require life-saving aid and reside in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states in northeastern Nigeria.
In the last few years, most UN humanitarian aid to Nigeria has been directed toward the northeastern region as humanitarian needs have continued to exacerbate. Despite this assistance, the situation in the area has not improved but has continued to deteriorate.
Over the past eight years, humanitarian aid to Nigeria has steadily declined by 40%, with a sharper decrease in the last two years. It declined from US$980.1 million in 2017 to US$593 million in 2024.
This decline may be attributed to reduced global funding, as global humanitarian funding dropped by 10% between 2023 and 2024. It moved from US$36.7 billion in 2023 to US$33.03 billion in 2024.
Despite the overall decline in aid to Nigeria, the country's share of total global humanitarian aid in 2024 increased compared to 2023. The percentage of aid received rose by 0.10 percentage points, from 1.70% in 2023 to 1.80% in 2024.
Among more than 174 aid-recipient countries, Nigeria has consistently ranked among the top 15 recipients of humanitarian aid over the past eight years.
The increased demand for humanitarian aid in Nigeria and its high ranking among aid recipients have been largely driven by the increasing humanitarian needs in northeastern Nigeria.
According to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mohammed Malick Fall, the need has been “driven by conflict, climate shocks, and economic instability, with compounding effects of flooding, disease outbreaks, food insecurity and malnutrition deepening vulnerabilities.”
The 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for Nigeria, which assesses household and individual deprivations in education, health, and living standards, indicates that the northeastern and northwestern regions have the highest poverty levels in the country.
The North East has an MPI of 0.32. This implies that in a group of 100 people, 32 out of them are multidimensionally poor.
Nigeria's humanitarian crisis, particularly in the northeastern region, continues to worsen despite ongoing aid efforts. With 2.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), 2.1 million returnees, 1.8 million children suffering from acute malnutrition, and 1.3 million hectares of farmland lost to flooding—resulting in nearly US$1 billion in cereal crop losses—the situation remains dire and increasingly urgent.
With 7.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2025, including 3.6 million requiring urgent aid in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, addressing these challenges demands a more sustainable and coordinated approach.
It is time for Nigeria to strengthen long-term development initiatives, enhance infrastructural development against climate shocks, and ensure efficient resource allocation. This will be key to reversing the region’s deteriorating conditions.
Also, urgent and sustained global support, alongside strong government-led interventions, is essential to mitigating the crisis and fostering lasting stability in Nigeria’s most affected regions.
Investors Beware: The Risks of Unregulated Schemes in Nigeria’s Capital Market
On 24th of January, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released a circular advising the public to refrain from engaging in any business partnership or relating to the Nigerian Capital Market with Risevest (Victoria Island) Cooperative Multipurpose Society Limited and Stecs (Alausa) Multipurpose Cooperative Society.
The commission stated, “Transacting in the Nigerian Capital Market with unregistered and unregulated entities exposes investors to the risk of fraud and potential loss of investment.”
This warning is one of several issued by the SEC in recent years, often preceding cases where individuals have lost money or fallen victim to fraudulent investment schemes.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (US), “financial fraud is intentionally and knowingly deceiving the victim by misrepresenting, concealing, or omitting facts about promised goods, services, or other benefits and consequences that are nonexistent, unnecessary, never intended to be provided, or deliberately distorted for monetary gain”.
Fraud remains a significant concern but has decreased over the past two years. This might be due to better regulatory enforcement, increased public awareness, and improved market oversight.
Over the past 5 years, reported fraud cases have surged by 112.7%, indicating a significant rise in fraudulent activities. The reported cases increased from 44,947 in 2019 to 95,620 in 2023.
Concurrently, the total financial losses attributed to fraud expanded from $2.96 billion in 2019 to $17.7 billion in 2023, highlighting the impact of fraudulent activities on the economy.
This might imply that while fraud cases have declined in the past two years, total financial losses have increased, suggesting that scams are becoming more sophisticated, targeting higher-value victims, or exploiting systemic vulnerabilities.
Notably, according to data from the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), social engineering accounted for 66% of all the fraudulent activities that took place in 2023. This points to social engineering emerging as the primary technique used by fraudsters.
This psychological manipulation tactic exploits human behavior to deceive individuals, making it one of the most prevalent methods in financial fraud and investment scams.
In 2018, a notable case of investment fraud was the Mavrodi Mundial Movement (MMM). According to a report from the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), around 3 million Nigerians experienced financial losses totaling over ₦18 billion as a result of their involvement in MMM.
The MMM scheme was perceived as a high-yield investment program that operated without registration or regulatory oversight. It attracted investors by promising a 30% monthly return along with additional promotional incentives.
This case highlights the negative effects of unregistered and unregulated investment schemes on individual investors and the broader financial system.
While the SEC has advised the public to avoid engaging with these investment schemes, Risevest (Victoria Island) Cooperative Multipurpose Society Limited issued a circular to its investors, similar to its response in 2021 when the SEC previously stated that it was not registered on the Nigerian Stock Market.
Risevest is an investment company that connects its investors to dollar-denominated investments in developed markets, while Stecs Multipurpose Corporative Society is a digital banking system that combines Shariah-compliant investments and wealth management tools, so one can spend, save, invest, and plan.
Thanks for reading this edition of Marina and Maitama. It was written by Lucy Okonkwo, and edited by Joachim MacEbong.
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