UNICEF Nigerian Representative, Jean Gough has warned that, some 50,000 children could starve to death this year in Borno state alone if nothing is done to arrest the humanitarian crises facing over 250,000 children under five years, who are suffering from Malnutrition.
Jean who was speaking to newsmen in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital observed that, Northeast Nigeria has been torn apart in the last seven years by Boko Haram insurgents, where not less than 20,000 people have been killed and more than 2.6 million others left homeless when Boko Haram attacked villages in the zone.

According to him, with homes and businesses destroyed and farmland devastated, there will be serious problem, “Unless we reach these children with treatment, one in five of them will die. We cannot allow that to happen.”


“We estimate that there will be almost a quarter of a million children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Borno this year,” Unicef Nigeria representative Jean Gough added.

As Nigeria’s military recaptures territory from the militants in the remote region, the full effects of the conflict are being laid bare as aid agencies are finally able to move in.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said at least 188 people died in the month of June 22, 2016, mainly from diarrhoea and malnutrition, in Bama, some 70 kilometres from Maiduguri, the theatre of Boko Haram crises.

Speaking on the reasons for the huge humanitarian crises and lack of proper feeding for the IDPs, governor Kashim Shettima said, his government has so far received cash donations of N345 million for the upkeep of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the state.


He said the state never received any cash donation from international donors for IDPs in the last four years.

“I want to say that many Nigerians may be shocked to know that a total of N345 million is the overall amount received as cash donation by the state government from May 2011 to date,” he explained