The United Children Education Fund (UNICEF) has revealed that nearly half a million children will face starvation in northeastern Nigeria next year and 80,000 will die if they don’t get treatment in the humanitarian crisis created by Boko Haram’s insurgency.
Its Executive Director Anthony Lake, in a statement said “What is already a crisis can become a catastrophe as about 400,000 children at risk of starvation represent just a fraction of the suffering among some 2.6 million refugees in the seven-year insurgency that has killed more than 20,000 people.
According to the statement, “If they do not receive the treatment they need, one in five of these children will die. Large areas of Borno state are completely inaccessible to any kind of humanitarian assistance. We are extremely concerned about the children trapped in these areas,” the statement added.
The statement also maintained that Boko Haram attacked a military-escorted humanitarian convoy in July about 70 kilometers (45 miles) from Maiduguri, the birthplace of the insurgency, wounding a UNICEF worker, two other aid workers and two soldiers.
It added that a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the windshield of a bullet-proof vehicle, one that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has accused the agency of buying instead of spending money on people in need.
It would be recalled that President Buhari accused the U.N. and private international aid agencies of exaggerating the crisis to seek donations, even as he maintained that Boko Haram was “technically defeated” a year ago.
However, soldiers from a multinational force of Nigeria and neighboring countries have pushed the extremists out of towns and many villages they occupied, attacks on military outposts and suicide bombings of soft targets has remained.
Meanwhile, it is reported that children have been dying of starvation in Maiduguri since September with thousands of kids already dead, including 10 percent to 25 percent of children admitted to 110-bed Maiduguri emergency treatment center.
