The number facing hunger during the June-August lean season has quadrupled over the last five years, they said, noting that economic challenges such as double-digit inflation and stagnating local production had become major drivers of the crisis, beyond recurrent conflicts in the region.

Among the worst-affected countries are Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Mali, where around 2,600 people in northern areas are likely to experience catastrophic hunger, said the World Food Programme, U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization in a joint statement.

“The time to act is now. We need all partners to step up … to prevent the situation from getting out of control,” said Margot Vandervelden, WFP’s acting regional director for West Africa.

Due to the food shortages, malnutrition is alarmingly high, the agencies said, estimating that 16.7 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished across West and Central Africa.

The region’s heavy dependence on food imports has tightened the squeeze, particularly for countries battling high inflation such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.

Policies should be introduced to boost and diversify local food production “to respond to the unprecedented food and nutrition insecurity,” said Robert Guei, the FAO’s Sub-regional Coordinator for West Africa.

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Violence between farmers and pastoralists has become increasingly common in recent years as population growth leads to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads’ herds of cattle.

A local resident, Bernard Matur, said the gunmen attacked Maikatako village, in Plateau state, on Monday evening, killing at least 12 people.

Matur said the unprovoked attack was to take over their land, which herdsmen have done in neighbouring villages.

Governor Simon Bako Lalong said 11 people were killed in the attack. He added that the rising incidence of attacks and destruction of farm crops, livestock and other properties within the state was becoming worrisome and needed to be checked.

Last month, clashes between herdsmen and farmers in the Nigerian state of Benue left at least 23 people dead.

— Reporting for Reuters by Camillus Eboh; writing by Chijioke Ohuocha.

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The torrent was, until recently, the East-West Road in Nigeria’s Rivers state, the gateway to the nation’s oil and gas.

Now parts of Rivers, along with large swathes of 32 other states, are inundated by the worst flooding in 12 years.

“We cannot access Ahoada West anymore,” local government chairman Hope Ikiriko said of the area he represents. He said 30 boats were helping to move people to camps built to accommodate the area’s 150,000 displaced.

“We are going to rescue people who hitherto never wanted to quit,” he added.

Nigerian authorities said Rivers, Anambra, Delta, Cross River and Bayelsa states remain at risk of flooding until the end of November.

The flooding has killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and damaged or destroyed 440,000 hectares of farmland. Health officials warn it could worsen an ongoing cholera outbreak, and even natural gas exports are at risk.

Authorities blame heavy rains and a water release from the Lagdo dam in Cameroon. Experts say global warming, and poor planning, worsened the disaster.

“Climate change is playing a big role in this,” said Hiba Baroud, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. “But the other component is…the vulnerability of the infrastructure. This is how we end up in a disaster like this one.”

The 2021 Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index ranked Nigeria among the bottom 20 nations in its readiness to adapt to climate change.

Baroud said a Nigerian dam meant to backstop Cameroon’s Lagdo was planned, but never completed. A lack of zoning allows houses in flood zones and poor irrigation places farmers at the edge of rivers that can inundate their fields.

“It’s going to have cascading effects on diseases, on food security and so on,” Baroud said.

The nearby nation of Chad also declared a state of emergency Wednesday over flooding reported to be affecting more than a million people.

Chad’s two main rivers, the Chari and Logone, flow through its southern provinces and empty into Lake Chad, at the country’s border area with Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon.

This year Lake Chad was fed early on by other tributaries and its water level became higher than that of the two rivers, causing them to flow instead into surrounding towns and villages, said Hamid Abakar Souleymane, a hydrologist at Chad’s National Meteorological Agency.

— Angela Ukomadu is a news producer for Reuters in Lagos; additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja, Libby George in Lagos and Mahamat Ramadane in N’Djamena; writing by Libby George.

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