Using Humanitarian Data to Guide Risk Analysis, Needs Assessment and Response Prioritisation in North East Nigeria

Abstract

In North-East Nigeria in 2024, humanitarian evidence was most usable when it was timely, specific to the unit at which resources were allocated, transparent about its reference date and attached to an established decision routine. A structured documentary analysis of records published no later than 2024 finds that the government-led countrywide hazard risk analysis, developed under the leadership of the National Emergency Management Agency with technical support from UNICEF, was launched in December 2024, after the year's main prioritisation episodes; that appeal targets rested on figures labelled provisional; and that operational records contain mismatched reporting dates, competing displacement totals and derived rates that cannot be reproduced from their own tables. Recomputing published cholera figures shows that a state's priority rank moves from first to third depending on the chosen metric, so metric selection carries distributive consequences. The study reconstructs four documented decision episodes, inventories three evidence systems, audits selected indicators and records contradictory figures with the basis of their resolution. Evidence use is judged adequate where evidence fitted the decision's scale, uncertainties were recorded, criteria were stated and the rationale was documented; no episode met all four conditions in the public record. From these findings, the article derives a seven-stage evidence-to-decision chain, a case-derived diagnostic checklist with verifiable indicators that requires testing in further cases.