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UN releases $13million for Boko Haram victims in northern Nigeria

Published

July 12, 2016

In a bid to cater for the increasing number of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, refugees and returnees, the United Nations Humanitarian agency has released $13 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund, CERF, to provide life-saving assistance to 250,000 persons in North-East of Nigeria.

According to a statement released on Monday to this regards, the CERF funding will help more than 50,000 persons rebuild their livelihoods by providing food, including the all-important child nutritional supplements.

In a statement by Stephen O’Brien, on behalf of the UN agency, the humanitarian group says the international community must take advantage of the better access to vulnerable people, in order to reach them with essential services and build on the CERF allocation to scale up the response.

“The humanitarian crisis in North-East Nigeria is massive and alarming: 15 million people are affected by the violence instigated by Boko Haram including seven million people who need urgent humanitarian assistance,” said Munir Safieldin, the acting Humanitarian Coordinator.

The released $13 million brings the total CERF support to more than $70 million. $27 million was allocated in March 2015 to assist more than 1.6 million Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, refugees, returnees, and host communities in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. While an additional $31 million was provided in early 2016 to help 700,000 people in the Lake Chad Basin.

Today, there are over 2 million IDPs mostly women and children, from the insurgency in northeast Nigeria and another 80,000 taking refuge in neighbouring Cameroon, according to figures from the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

Recent reports of famine in camps for IDPs have raised concerns within and outside Nigeria. In a camp in Bama, a town in Borno state, 200 children were reported to have died from hunger, while many suffer from malnutrition. According to Laolu Akande, the senior special assistant to the vice-president on media and publicity, at least 20,000 people were killed by Boko Haram between 2011 and 2015 in Nigeria.

Borno state has been worst hit by the crisis with a loss of $6bn while Yobe and Adamawa states were next in devastation. The northeast region suffered damage worth $3bn in housing alone, while it also suffered huge damage in terms of livestock which brought about the need to restore agriculture in the region.

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