Nigeria Among a Dozen African Nations on Watchlist
Twelve of the 20 nations on the 2024 International Rescue Committee’s Emergency Watchlist are on the continent of Africa. Graph provided by IRC.
The International Rescue Committee this week released their 2024 Emergency Watchlist of the 20 countries in the world that could be facing serious trouble in the coming year. The list helps the IRC to determine where to focus their emergency preparedness efforts, and has successfully predicted on average 85-95% of the 20 countries facing the worst humanitarian deteriorations. Nigeria is on the list, along with 11 other African nations. While much of the world’s attention is focused on the wars in Garza and Ukraine, the IRC believes the humanitarian crises in other parts of the world should not be ignored.
“We cannot forget massive, and growing, challenges globally,” the report states. “It is noteworthy that unlike any previous year, eight of the Top 10 countries are in Africa and that, for the second year in a row, an African country— this time, Sudan—tops the list.”
It should also be noted of Nigeria’s placement on the list. Africa’s second most populated nation is suffering deepening poverty and inequality based on a number of factors, including but not limited to: political strife, a freefalling currency, rising inflation, internal security challenges, a deteriorating health care system and climate change that will drive food insecurity, according to the report. Nigeria has both one of the largest economies in Africa and the second-largest population living in extreme poverty globally, the IRC said.
While last year there were concerns of violence leading up to the general elections in the 2023 IRC Emergency Watchlist, this year’s concerns of political violence revolve around Tinubu’s questionable actions taken to become president and the controversial high court’s decision to keep him in office amidst mounting credible evidence questioning his identity, character and qualifications.
The IRC also noted that due to the ongoing violence in the Borno state, displacement numbers could be as high as 2.2 million people. The IRC is directly questioning the policies of President Bola Tinubu of sending displaced people back to their homes, where there could be limited services to provide for them and putting a strain on important social services.
“After taking office in May 2023, President Bola Tinubu scrapped long-running fuel subsidies that had buffered the Nigerian population from the global rise in fuel prices but had simultaneously drained government resources,” it states in the IRC report. “This, coupled with exchange rate reforms that significantly devalued the naira—which has fallen to record lows against the U.S. dollar—pushed inflation to an 18-year high in September 2023 at more than 26 percent. High inflation pushed 4 million more people into poverty in the first five months of 2023, with the total number of people living below the poverty line reaching 84 million. Prices will continue to rise in the coming year with widespread insecurity further undermining livelihoods and limiting the affordability and availability of essential goods.”
The report continued by stating that the price of food in Nigeria is rising faster than other goods. This is what led to President Tinubu to call for a state of emergency this past July. The unfortunate large-scale flooding Nigeria has experienced in recent years has washed away farmlands and is a contributing factor in low-yield harvesting of important crops, that will make food insecurity dire. Children under the age of 5 in the conflict-affected areas of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, have seen their risk of malnutrition double in the last year from 350,000 to 700,000, according to the IRC report.
The “brain-drain” is real in Nigeria. This term describes when you have an emigration of highly trained or intelligent people leaving from a particular country or region. In the case of Nigeria, the “brain drain” is having a significant impact on the health care system, according to the IRC.
Approximately 2,000 doctors have left Nigeria and about 75,000 nurses and midwives in the last five years, according to the IRC. They are emigrating to places like the United States, England and Canada, with a report from Al Jazeera that Saudi Arabia is also recruiting Nigerian medical professionals. The result is Nigerian citizens are being put at higher risk of death and disease. It is not just because of the low salaries medical professionals receive in Nigeria that is driving many to leave, they fear for their own safety while at work and are lacking the proper infrastructure and resources they need to do their work, the report states.
“For every doctor in Nigeria, there are over 10,000 patients, 20 times what the World Health Organization recommends,” the IRC report states. “Immunization rates are falling and limited health infrastructure and availability of doctors reduce testing levels and increase the risk of diseases spreading—as illustrated by an ongoing 2.2M diphtheria outbreak.”
Nigeria has been on the IRC’s Emergency Watchlist for several years in a row now, although it has not been in the Top 10 since 2022, which could be viewed as progress. However, with the political violence that has been taking place all across the nation since Tinubu’s election, and continued violent crimes such as human trafficking and rape occurring and believed to be vastly underreported, the IRC will be keeping a close eye on Nigeria in the coming year.