Simba Tirima, the country director for Doctors Without Borders in Nigeria has raised the alarm over the increase in magnitude of the numbers of children in Northern Nigeria suffering from malnutrition in comparison with April last year. He was speaking to Al Jazeera this evening as they examined the impact of conflict with Boko Haram and violence from banditry and other non-state actors in the region.
Millions of people have been displaced from their homes and farms in the region, living in IDP camps and can’t return to normal life. These people are dependent on humanitarian aid from agencies like Doctors Without Borders, the World Food Programme, Unicef, etc.
Simba Tirima country director Doctors Without Borders.
But conflicts lasting over 11 years are taking their toll with many agencies and donors scaling down on support. The World Food Programme estimates that about $620m is needed to feed refugees and vulnerable people in the region. The UN’s aid agencies are also reportedly scaling back operations.
The humanitarian emergency begs the question what Nigeria’s leadership is doing to plug the gaps in aid funding. President Bola Tinubu is holed up in a secret location in France on what his handlers have euphemistically called a “working visit”. Nigeria has a Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development but they hardly acknowledge the problem let alone deal with it.
