75,000 Nigerian children risk dying in 'months' due to starvation - UN

The United Nations on Tuesday warned that about 75,000 Nigerian children risk dying in “a few months” as hunger grips the west African country’s ravaged northeast in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Since taking up arms against the government of Nigeria in 2009, the Islamic terrorist sect, Boko Haram jihadists have laid waste to the impoverished region, displacing millions of people and disrupting farming and trade.

Though the Nigerian military has reclaimed large territory from the terrorist group but the insurgency has taken it's toll on the region, with more than 20,000 people killed, 2.6 million people displaced from their homes, and famine hitting the region.

A mother feeds her malnourished child at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Picture: Sunday Alamba.Source:AP

Describing the situation, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator Peter Lundberg told told reporters in Abuja, the Nigerian capital  that the crisis was unfolding at “high speed.” 

“Currently our assessment is that 14 million people are identified as in need of humanitarian assistance,” by 2017, Lundberg said.

Out of them, 400,000 children are in critical need of assistance, while 75,000 could die “in (the) few months ahead of us,” Lundberg said.

According to the UN, it hopes to target half of the 14 million people as the Nigerian government work to reach the rest.

Lundberg said the UN did not have enough money to stop the crisis and called on international partners, the private sector and Nigerian philanthropists to “join hands” to tackle the problem.

“We need to reach out to the private sector, to the philanthropists in Nigeria,” Lundberg said.

“We will ask international partners to step in because we can only solve this situation if we actually join hands.”

APF