At the end of July 2025, the world was shocked to learn that 169 people, including 93 children, had died of malnutrition in Palestine since the outbreak of the devastating war with Israel. For context, the war has gone on actively for close to two years. Tragic and painful as this figure is, it is utterly dwarfed by a chilling statistic from Nigeria: over 652 children have died from malnutrition in Katsina State alone, and that’s just in the first half of 2025.
This jarring incongruity provokes a bleak and sobering question: How can a nation not technically in war end up outpacing a war zone in deaths due to hunger and malnutrition?
