Beneath the staggering statistics lies a 26-year story of resilience, community partnership and human lives forever shaped by impact.
Imagine standing in a community clinic in a far-flung community in Nigeria and watching a mother receive life-saving care for her child or walking through a village where middle-aged people and young adults see clean water flowing from taps and boreholes for the first time.
It is in these quiet, unscripted moments that the true essence of the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Nigeria comes into focus.
Over the past 26 years, as conflict, terrorism, banditry, disease, and economic volatility repeatedly tested the resilience of regions across Nigeria, CRS stood firmly as an anchor in the storm and has not just built a footprint, but quietly woven itself into the daily survival and long-term dignity of millions.
With an estimated population of 240 million in 2026, touching 70 million lives, representing about a quarter of the population is no small feat, but this is the cumulative result of sustained grassroots partnership, local empowerment and a relentless focus on human dignity when systems fail.
The CRS is a non-governmental organisation that carries out the commitment of the Catholic Bishops of the United States to support poor and vulnerable communities around the world. The organisation first came into Nigeria in 1960 and left after the civil war in 1970. In 1990, it returned and restarted outreach projects with the church and in 1999, opened an office to support peace and justice efforts. By the 2000s, CRS’s efforts expanded to other health and humanitarian interventions.
In one of the hard-to-reach communities in Kaduna State, a community volunteer, Zainab, moved from house-to-house. In one of the houses, she met Yusuf, a young boy visibly weakened by illness, who, like dozens of children in his village, had never received a routine vaccine.
Zainab didn’t just log a statistic; she encouraged his family to seek care and worked with local health teams to connect the household to services. This effort would eventually culminate in a local health outreach session where 22 previously unvaccinated children received routine immunisation.
Today, CRS’ health programming alone has reached nearly 68,000 children with malaria prevention, supported 40,000 children and adolescents living with HIV, and facilitated immunisations for more than 8.5 million children.
In the agricultural sector, where CRS has supported over 57,000 farmers, seed entrepreneurs, and herders, adaptation has redefined local economies.
When Emmanuel left a career in banking to start a garri processing business, a lightning strike destroyed his solar facility and nearly crippled his operations, but through training with the CRS-backed BASICS project, he became a certified cassava seed entrepreneur, revived his factory, and is today known locally as the “Celebrity Farmer.”
Another farmer, Jato-Joseph Terhemen, leveraged the same seed entrepreneurship training to scale his yields and increase his income to over N1.5 million in 2024 alone.
In another community, farmer Aisha Suleman replaced commercial fertilisers with low-cost local manure techniques after participating in the CRS THRIVE project, and no longer has to buy manure from stores.
The CRS philosophy extends to economic resilience, where its supported Savings and Internal Lending Community (SILC) group initiatives have reached over 600,000 people, mobilising nearly $6.5 million in local capital while delivering clean water access to 193,000 residents.
Through the ICHSSA-4 Project in Bauchi State, a beneficiary, Alheri Luka, who faced the same challenges many women face – limited resources, unstable income, and few economic opportunities – joined a SILC group and, with a small loan and vocational training, she built a business that eventually expanded into poultry and rice farming, and began contributing significantly to the needs of her family. Alheri’s story is proof of what little efforts can yield, as beyond the business comes confidence, the ability to make choices, to plan, to save and to invest.
Speaking at the event to mark the CRS Nigeria Impact Showcase 2026, with the theme: “CRS at Work: Scaling Impact in Nigeria,” Country Representative, Akim Kikonda, said the event was an opportunity to look beyond statistics and reports, and see the people, communities, institutions, and partnerships that have made impact possible.
He pointed out that CRS has worked to accompany communities in addressing some of the country’s most pressing development and humanitarian challenges, through collaboration with government institutions, the Catholic Church, other faith-based organisations, community groups, NGOs, and many other stakeholders.
Speaking on CRS impact over the years, Kikonda said it was important to go beyond the numbers to see the people whose lives the organisation has touched and transformed in various ways.
“They are mothers who now have greater access to quality healthcare and life-saving services for themselves and their children. They are farmers who have increased productivity and strengthened food security. They are communities affected by conflict, displacement, and disaster who have rebuilt their lives with dignity and hope,” he said.
Listing strategic areas where CRS’ work is focused: Health Systems Strengthening, Agriculture and Food Security, Livelihoods and Community Resilience, Humanitarian Response, Peacebuilding and Social Cohesion, he pointed out that the programmes, though different, are united by a common goal: helping communities not only overcome immediate challenges but also build stronger systems and greater resilience for the future
The Country Representative said one important lesson CRS Nigeria had learnt over the years was that lasting change cannot be delivered by any one organisation acting alone, emphasising the need for collaboration.
As stated by Head of Programming, Lucie Amadou, impact often begins with numbers: How many people reached, how many households served, and how many communities supported, but impact is never experienced as a number.
“Impact is experienced as a child receiving life-saving care, a farmer rebuilding a business, a woman creating economic opportunities for her family, a family recovering after disaster or a community choosing dialogue over conflict,” she noted.
According to her, “every one of those statistics represents somebody who chose not to give up. Because food security is not only about growing crops. It is about creating livelihoods, strengthening markets and helping farmers become entrepreneurs.”
Across its emergency response operations, CRS has reached 1.4 million people, providing $41 million in cash and voucher assistance and reaching nearly 286,000 in food assistance.
Of particular note is the severe flooding in Mokwa, Niger State, in 2025, during which CRS partnered with the local Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC) to deploy emergency assistance.
Among those hit by the flooding was Farida Abubakar, who lost her mother and home, but when speaking about the future, she spoke in one sentence, a sentence that captures what humanitarian response is all about: not only helping people survive, but helping them begin again.
“People are bouncing back after counting their losses,” Abubakar said.
Recovery begins when people can imagine a future beyond crisis, and rebuilding physical infrastructure, however, it means little without restoring social cohesion.
In Adamawa State, through the STaRProject, CRS trained 282 Youth Ambassadors focused on resolving interpersonal disputes before they trigger broader instability.
A particular case that stands out is when a land dispute between two farmers, Ayuba and Aminu, threatened to escalate into a costly court battle, but community facilitators and youth ambassadors stepped in to mediate and helped resolve the conflict through dialogue.
That is peacebuilding, not a slogan, not a workshop. A conflict prevented, a relationship restored, a community choosing another path.
Across CRS-supported peacebuilding and social cohesion programming, the organisation has reached over 250,000 people with social cohesion initiatives.
The head of programming noted that even though Nigeria continues to face significant challenges, it also possesses extraordinary potential: Young people with ideas; Women building businesses; Farmers innovating; Communities rebuilding; Teachers shaping peace; Volunteers saving lives; and Institutions leading change.
“The question before us is no longer whether progress is possible. The evidence is all around us. The question is how we ensure that proven solutions become lasting systems.
“Whether we can invest in strong systems. Support local leadership. Strengthen the evidence behind what works. And ensure that solutions proven in one community can benefit many others. That is the opportunity before us. And that is the purpose of today’s showcase,” she stated.
During a showcase, CRS staff at various booths also shared reflections on the journey so far.
Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL), Coordinator, Jimin Sontyo, said through the health systems strengthening component, which covers all health-related services, CRS Nigeria has supported immunisation programmes including polio eradication efforts, particularly in Northern Nigeria, distributed over 119,000 insecticide treated mosquito nets and over 600,000 orphans and vulnerable children reached with another 39,000 children infected with HIV, supported with care and services, in addition to other support services to the government in the thematic area, saying the CRS will continue to fulfil its mission to reach the vulnerable and poor in Nigeria.
For Emergency Coordinator, Wilson Kipkoech, the beauty about humanitarian emergency response is that the impact is felt within a very short period of time because in most of the communities CRSgoes into, people are at their lowest after disaster and right now, over 300,000people have been reached by emergency response across three regions: North Central, North East and North West, particularly with food assistance and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)support.
He mentioned the production of nutrition-boosting cereal, Tombrown, as one of the areas that CRS has anchored and achieved sustainability in communities.
Programme Manager, Regreening Africa, Peter Apagu, said CRS has worked with farmers, women and youth in the area of food security and building agricultural resilience in the firm belief that better inputs give rise to better harvests. CRS, according to him, provides them quality inputs, carries out capacity-building trainings on good agronomic practices and provides water points for pastoralists and farmers, which prevents conflicts within communities. Overall, the efforts, he noted, have become a pathway out of poverty, a source of dignity and will contribute towards the building of food security and resilience within the country.
As Amadou said, after 26 years, perhaps the greatest lesson CRS has learned is this: “sustainable impact is not measured by what we build ourselves but by what communities, institutions, and local leaders are able to carry forward long after we are gone. That is the future we are working toward. That is the future worth scaling.”
