Famine looms in northern Nigeria, MSF warns
Northest Nigeria is “close” to famine with hundreds of thousands trapped without help, and must be declared a “top emergency” by the UN, said Medical charity Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday.
The charity known by its French acronym MSF said the region devastated by Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency had between 500,000 and 800,000 people trapped in areas that cannot be reached by humanitarian workers.
A UN “top emergency” designation — which would put Nigeria on a list with Syria, Iraq and Yemen — would immediately mobilise more resources to a crisis that has not received nearly enough attention, MSF said.
Boko Haram attacks in the northeast have declined over the last year, but MSF’s emergency programme manager Hugues Robert noted that aid workers were still limited in where they can go.
Some cities in the northeast, such as Banki and Bama, had gone up to 18 months without any humanitarian deliveries before aid agencies and the UN arrived in June.
“What was extremely shocking was the level of severe acute malnutrition,” Robert said, adding that communities faced “close to a famine situation.”
Many areas can only be accessed under escort from the Nigerian army, he told reporters in Geneva after returning from Borno state, the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency.
“We need the UN and all their agencies to consider this as a top emergency,” Bruno Jochum, director of MSF Switzerland, told reporters.
Boko Haram, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria, has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing more than 2.6 million people since 2009.
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10 Comments
Buhari is killing Nigerian children, this country has never been this bad. Buhari shoul resign, he has lost legitimacy.
Starvation in peacetime? Welcome to the change promised by The Certificateless One and his party with the acronym of an expired analgesic. You have to feel sorry for the unfortunate children, but then their idiot parents voted for this mess of a `Governmnet, for the same reasons that they massacred children in a previous genocidal orgy fifty years ago. I cannot pretend to be too worried; I was a victim of the same backward and imbecile tendency fifty years ago and millions of better children died. Perhaps there is such a thing as divine justice.
There is too much blood letting in the land. During the time of King David, famine was traced to the innocent blood shed by his predecessor, King Saul. Until the descendants of the people killed were called upon to ask forgive famine did not go. Innocent blood shed over the years are crying for vengeance. Period. The nation needs mass repentance from unrighteousness. All the past presidents should come together, release their stollen loot, parlay and repent and apologize for their wickedness.
these people were unjustly removed from their ancestral homes by nigerian troops…
What a disgrace to Nigerian Government if its really true, also SAD News , wow. , The same Nigeria that West African Countries depend on their supplies for trading , Hmm
they should have allowed them to remain in sambisa and harvest their farms…
God help Nigeria
This is very serious. All hands must be on deck to avert the looming catastrophe.
The afflicted and their leaders need to ask for forgiveness from Biafran children..Only then will they get relief from their self imposed self destructiveNess via their jihad.
sharrap…
We will review and take appropriate action.