… Counts real cost of a fratricidal Boko Haram war By Soni Daniel with UN report Eight years after Boko Haram launched a senseless war that has claimed over 20,000 lives and displaced over 1.8 million people now scattered in IDP camps across North Eastern Nigeria, the real cost of the fratricidal war now beckons: 8.5 million people are in urgent need of life-saving assistance, 5.2 million are in dire need of food security interventions and 3.4 in urgent need of nutrition assistance. But the fund for all of this is not readily available, putting the fate of the victims in the balance and their future in uncertainty. Halima, three, is sitting on the bare floor close to her 21-year-old mother, Sadiatu, and they are actively muttering some words to each other. The time is about 2pm on a Tuesday and they have not yet had their breakfast due to the fact that there is no food in their new abode and the money to do so, is not available.

Boko Haram Their abode, known as Bakassi IDP Camp, in Maiduguri the Borno State Capital, is holding them and thousands of other persons violently displaced from their ancestral homes and communities in many parts of the state and thrown into despondency, fear and distress by the Boko Haram terrorists, who have since 2009 been killing, maiming and kidnapping people in pursuit of an agenda: the declaration of a Caliphate where western education would be outlawed. As a reporter gets close to Sadiatu and her daughter to figure out the reason for their pensive mood, the mother offered a clue: “We don’t have anything in this house and we don’t know where our next meal will come from,” Sadiatu lamented. As she narrates her jeremiad to a team of reporters, other occupants of the make-shift camp- a housing estate planned by the Borno State Government but hurriedly converted to a holding camp for the displaced victims, many other IPDs gather around to describe their pitiable situations. Adamu Shehu, 12, an orphan, is moving from one hut in the camp to the other in search of any form of provision, having lost her two parents to the Boko Haram terrorists when they struck Gwoza over three years ago. Beyond the violent killing of his parents, Adamu said their home was razed by the insurgents and other members of the family killed, wounded or taken away to unknown destination.


Sadiatu, Halima and Adamu are just a few of the thousands of IDPs squatting at the Bakassi Camp provided by the Borno State Government and receiving material and logistical support from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UNOCHA. No fewer than five of such camps have been provided by the Borno State Government to provide temporary accommodation for the IDPs and protect them from further exploitation by their tormentors. The three are among the 1.8 million victims of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has claimed no fewer than 20,000 lives and destroyed many hitherto flourishing communities and displaced their inhabitants across the six north east states of Nigeria, sparking one of the world’s worst refugee scenarios. According to OCHA, the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria’s Northeast and the Lake Chad region is one of the most severe in the world today with 8.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance in 2017 in the worst affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe with the war now in its eighth year, showing no signs of abating. Beyond the 8.5 people in need of humanitarian assistance, no fewer than 1.7 million according to OCHA, are internally displaced in the three states, with 80 percent of them in Borno State alone, the epic centre of the crisis and over half of them living outside IDP camps in local communities, who are themselves said to be among the world’s poorest people.


Aside that, 6.1 million people in the area are in need of protection while no fewer than 4000 women and girls are reported to have been abducted since 2009 by the insurgents. UNOCHA in its latest update on the crisis entitled, Northeast: Humanitarian Review, noted, “Civilians continue to bear the brunt of a conflict that has resulted in widespread forced displacement, violations of international humanitarian and human laws, severe protection concerns and a food and nutrition crisis of massive proportions. “Insecurity, especially in swathes of Borno State, continues to hamper humanitarian operations. However, through coordinated logistics and civil-military coordination efforts, humanitarian teams can now access some areas that were previously inaccessible. This has revealed new depth of devastation and humanitarian need,” OCHA said. The atrocities of Boko Haram is that in most cases whole communities have been destroyed, farmlands set ablaze and the inhabitants killed or kidnapped while women have been serially raped and turned into sex machines and suicide bombers. The situation is dire! Food is no longer coming from the farms of those communities destroyed by the insurgents while those left behind, if any, are too scared to go their farms for any kind of cultivation. This has brought about a serious threat to food security and opened the potential for starvation and malnutrition across the northeast. The lingering threats and attacks by the insurgents have also blocked accessibility in some of the states in the northeast to humanitarian assistance providers. According to reports, the prolonged humanitarian crisis has already had a devastating impact on food security and nutrition in the North-eastern part of Nigeria with 5.2 million people currently in need of food assistance in the three most affected states and 450,000 children under five in need of nutrition support.


OCHA, whose officials are already working in the worst affected areas, says that the food situation remains precarious. It notes: “Rapid food assessments were recently carried out in eastern Borno and high food deficits and high food prices remain pronounced across the three areas surveyed in Banki, Gwoza and Pulka. “In addition, access to vulnerable populations has been limited since July due to insecurity and the rainy season, resulting in convoy delays and an inability to reach some locations,” the agency reported. The humanitarian situation in the Northeast has become pronounced and caught the attention of the United Nations Secretary General, who recently raised the alarm that at least 20 million people in Nigeria’s Northeast, Somalia, Yemen and South Sudan are facing devastating levels of food security and asked for urgent intervention to avert the disaster.

Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/11/20m-now-face-devastation-un-ranks-nigeria-somalia-yemen-south-sudan/

If they don't give us Biafra, Somalia will be better than the zoo - Nnamdi Kanu

Imagine

The humanitarian situation in the Northeast has become pronounced and caught the attention of the United Nations Secretary General, who recently raised the alarm that at least 20 million people in Nigeria’s Northeast, Somalia, Yemen and South Sudan are facing devastating levels of food security and asked for urgent intervention to avert the disaster.

Things are getting worse every year. There is no limit for Nigeria when it comes to their downfall.

Nigeria is the only African country today where the poverty rate has actually increased. We are about to surpass India. A country of 1.3 billion people.

This article focuses on extreme poverty meaning those poor ones that are literally starving.

When you include the regular poor, that are managing to survive and living on less than $2 a day, then the number is even more devastating.

Na who UN epp. make dem shift one side .

myright:
If they don't give us Biafra, Somalia will be better than the zoo - Nnamdi Kanu

Truer words have never been spoken. Myopic louts were thinking IPOB would take up arms to do their dirty jobs so they 'proactively' labelled them terrorists. See d terrorism as e dey happen na, dem no fit talk. Every day this hell hole keeps sinking and getting the worst ranking of everything bad.

myright:
If they don't give us Biafra, Somalia will be better than the zoo - Nnamdi Kanu

hmm!

horsepower101:
This article focuses on extreme poverty meaning those poor ones that are literally starving.

When you include the regular poor, that are managing to survive and living on less than $2 a day, then the number is even more devastating.

Less than a quarter dollar (>$0.25)

It is no surprise but some blind patriots who ve been deluding themselves since birth wud rant that Nigeria is heaven on earth forming patriots.
Anyway d person don chop ban that is y I will not get response coupled with the fear of chopping more bans has instilled some sanity that has been lacking.

Even a fetus in d womb knows that Nigeria is living hell for many. No thanks to the docile masses and the endless greed of the looters

The only hope for Nigeria if there is ever any is for it to be an oversea territory of a progressive European country.

Take it or leave it Nigeria is currently the worst country in the world with the poorest people

myright:
The humanitarian situation in the Northeast has become pronounced and caught the attention of the United Nations Secretary General, who recently raised the alarm that at least 20 million people in Nigeria’s Northeast, Somalia, Yemen and South Sudan are facing devastating levels of food security and asked for urgent intervention to avert the disaster.

So many things don't make sense in Nigeria.
The north say they feed the nation but can't feed their brother in need of food. The picture the average Nigerian has about our level of wealth is that of a wealthy nation that has more than enough to meet basic needs. When we consider the mouths that are waiting to be feed with our seemingly huge pocket Nigeria is one of the poorest nation.

Desyner:
So many things don't make sense in Nigeria.
The north say they feed the nation but can't feed their brother in need of food. The picture the average Nigerian has about our level of wealth is that of a wealthy nation that has more than enough to meet basic needs. When we consider the mouths that are waiting to be feed with our seemingly huge pocket Nigeria is one of the poorest nation.

Nigeria income and budget is nothing to write home about.
Go and check the budget and population of SA,Egypt,Tunisia,Namibia and compare it to that of Nigeria.

Nigeria is a poor country

BabaOwen:
Nigeria income and budget is nothing to write home about.
Go and check the budget and population of SA,Egypt,Tunisia,Namibia and compare it to that of Nigeria.

Nigeria is a poor country

My points exactly. We are poor yet our leader loot more than any other nation and we think we are rich.

Just imagine the kind of news always coming from this zoo of a country.

horsepower101:
This article focuses on extreme poverty meaning those poor ones that are literally starving.

When you include the regular poor, that are managing to survive and living on less than $2 a day, then the number is even more devastating.

....but Yorubas are are very comfortable with the status quo. The more tragically the country gets, the more greatness Yorubas see in her future(Their Lagos, their Eko Atlantic, their APC, their media, their music super stars and etc). Consciousness, they say is a state of being awake (spiritually too) of your space, environment and universe out of which, your soul illuminates to the truth. The Igbo general population even down to six years old are more conscious of Nigeria reality than the Yorubas hence they agitate(and have sacrificed millions of their lives for the world to see) that, they are CONSCIOUS of Nigeria tragedy from birth. This Igbo CONSCIOUSNESS of Nigeria came as a result of them being the most travelled within the Nigerian space ( Yorubas don't travel as much) They engage other Nigerian cultures through commerce and industry, extensive travelling, inter-marriages, killing of their love ones, not to talk of the casualties of road accidents as they move around( no critical infrastructure projects in their region due to political conspiracy) and at the end, they have drawn a conclusion about Nigeria reality only them are CONSCIOUS of. I must confess, I love Igbos and their special nature. One thing is clear, these international institution(s) (un, world bank etc) who are also CONSCIOUS of the Nigeria tragedy (because their forefathers created it (and bestowed it on them as a legacy they shouldn't tamper with) will continue to reel out the statistics as the situation gets more tragic, while the UNCONSCIOUS Yorubas see greatness in Nigeria future.

There is no country more cursed than Nigeria on the face of the earth ...




Kiss the truth

NA WA OOOO