Boko Haram victims need ‘$1m food assistance daily’

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says on a daily basis, one million dollars is needed to provide food assistance to the victims of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Peter Lundberg, deputy humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria, said there was urgent need to scale up operations in the affected areas to prevent famine.

“Food assistance alone will cost one million dollars a day to avoid famine in a region where 450,000 children under five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year,” Lundberg said in a statement.

“Sustained and timely financial support is needed to maintain the scale-up in operations desperately needed in the north-east of Nigeria.”

Lundberg said recently, representatives of 12 donor countries and agencies visited Borno, for the run up to the February 24 Humanitarian Conference on Nigeria and Lake Chad region.

“They (donors) lauded the scale-up of humanitarian operations in the north-east and emphasised the need for more funding, a stance the humanitarian community in Nigeria concurs with,” he said.

“We are grateful to our donors who have enabled us scale up the response and appreciate their continued commitment. We look forward to receiving the needed resources to implement the 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan for Nigeria.”

Lundberg said timely donor support amounting to a little over one billion dollars is required to sustain life-saving assistance to millions people devastated by the Boko Haram-linked violence.

“If the resources do not arrive in time, one in five children suffering sever acute malnutrition could die. The likelihood of a child with severe acute malnutrition surviving is nine times less than a properly nourished child,” he said.

According to OCHA, the eight-year-long conflict has left some 8.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in the worst-affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.

“In the coming months, around 5.1 million people will face severe food insecurity in the region, where some 1.8 million people have been displaced and millions are exposed to violence and abuse,” the UN OCHA official warned.