UNICEF warns that children in Nigeria may starve to death in 2017

The United Nations Child Agency, UNICEF has warned that nearly half a million children in northeastern Nigeria will face starvation in 2017 and about 80,000 will die if they don't get treatment in the humanitarian crisis created by the uprising of the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram.

The world’s body executive director Anthony Lake on Tuesday said;

"What is already a crisis can become a catastrophe."

Lake’s comments comes just days after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari accused the world body and other private international aid agencies of overstating the crisis to seek aids.

In Lake’s statement, he noted that 400,000 children are at risk of starvation and represent just a portion of the suffering among some 2.6 million refugees in the insurgency that has claimed the lives of more than 20,000 people, since the last seven years.

"If they do not receive the treatment they need, one in five of these children will die," Lake said.

The Associated Press in September reported that children in the region are already dying of starvation.

Michelle Faul, Associated Press