A new data by the Federal Government in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, World Food Programme, Action Against Hunger, among others, has revealed that Lagos State has the highest number of food-insecure people in the country.

The Food Security analysis report, otherwise called the Cadre Harmonise, which analysed 21 states and the Federal Capital Territory, was put together by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in collaboration with relevant stakeholders.

It was stated that a total of 1,780,194 people were food insecure in Lagos.

Also, Borno, Katsina and Sokoto had 1,429,988; 1,200,906; and 1,027,646 food insecure people in their domains, as they joined in the top four ranking states with food-insecure citizens in Nigeria.

The 21 states in the March to May 2022 cycle of Cadre Harmonise include Abia, Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross-River, Edo, Enugu, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Katsina.

Others include Kebbi, Lagos, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara, and the FCT.

This, it said, included 979,687 in emergency across Borno, Adamawa, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.

The report said the situation might persist unless conscious and intensive efforts were made to sustain humanitarian support and other government intervention schemes targeted at the households for recovery and resilience in their livelihoods.

“This projected marginal increase in the population of people who may require the immediate need of humanitarian assistance could be related to the insecurity wave in the North-East states (Borno, Adamawa and Yobe) and activities of bandits in some North-West and North-Central states (Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Benue and Niger),” the report stated.