Starvation is currently knocking on the door for more than 500,000 displaced families in the bleeding North-East axis of Nigeria. World Food Programme (WFP) has already warned that more than half a million people in the region are facing ration cuts unless urgent funding is secured.
The cuts will come just as severe hunger reaches a five-year high in the country. But, to sustain humanitarian operations in the area until March next year, just five months away, WFP urgently needs $197 million.
WFP’s Regional Director for West Africa, Chris Nikoi says “we must act now to save lives and avoid disruptions to this lifeline.” This follows years of insecurity linked to non-state armed groups that have disrupted livelihoods and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee in search of shelter.
At the moment, more than one million children are already malnourished, according to WFP spokesperson, Tomson Phiri, who told journalists in Geneva that the agency may have to cut rations to more than half a million women, men and children in the North-East by the end of the month, unless at least $55 million in new funding is found.
“We are facing very severe levels of hunger that we have witnessed since, this is probably the highest that we are witnessing since the crisis exploded in 2016. Approximately 4.4 million people are facing acute food insecurity in the conflict-affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.”
Phiri said that COVID-19 had pushed up food prices and limited food supply, and that the number of internally displaced people surpassed two million in September – reaching another grim milestone.
Amidst the socio-economic fallout from COVID-19, high food prices and limited food supply, Nikoi observed during a recent visit that “cutting rations means choosing who gets to eat and who goes to bed hungry”.
“We are seeing funding for our life-saving humanitarian work dry up just at the time when hunger is at its most severe”, he warned, reminding that WFP’s food assistance is “a lifeline for millions whose lives have been upended by conflict and have almost nothing to survive on”.
The number of people forced to flee their homes searching for safety in the North-East has been rising steadily.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Edward Kallon, while calling on partners to “step up” support in response to the growing needs, added, “cutting food assistance will be a painful decision for humanitarians as it will negatively affect children, women and men uprooted from their homes due to continued violence” .
For five years, WFP has been providing life-saving food and nutrition assistance to the severely food insecure, displaced families in camps, and to vulnerable people living in host communities.
This year, relying on the continued generosity of donor partners, WFP ramped up its response to address rising food insecurity and the impact of COVID-19, targeting 1.9 million displaced people in the country.
Stressing that WFP urgently needs $197 million, its regional director, Nikoi said, “we must act now to save lives and avoid disruptions to this lifeline.”
