Northeast Nigeria: Scenarios

Over five years of conflict in northeast Nigeria has resulted in critical levels of malnutrition and food insecurity. The military offensive in 2016 has resulted in the recapture of many urban areas and increased humanitarian access. While the government of Nigeria and humanitarian community are scaling up, the response remains inadequate. Driven by a lack of food and livelihoods in their places of displacement, many of the displaced are returning home to locations lacking critical infrastructure and essential services. The ongoing conflict has the potential to continue to cause further displacement and reduce food security.

There is an urgent need to ensure a coherent and robust response strategy that takes into account future developments to guide the current scale-up of operations.

The scenarios within this document are not attempts to predict the future. Rather they are a description of situations that could occur in the coming nine months, and are designed to highlight the possible impacts, and resulting humanitarian consequences, of the insurgency in northeast Nigeria.