ALIYU squatted in the spot where shrapnel tore his mother apart. The explosion at dusk harvested souls like unripe nuts. It shattered the four-year-old’s temporary refuge in Konduga, killing 21 people including his mother and five suicide bombers.
But as the village mourned it’s losses, Aliyu’s flaky skin and parched lips, his distended belly and gaunt eyes, bemoaned excruciating hunger pangs. Spasms of starvation constrain filial grief he could make no sense of. Aliyu, like his displaced peer in Maiduguri, Borno state, worries about food.
Having lost his father in an earlier terrorist attack in Bama, the four-year-old lives at the mercy of elderly refugees and volunteers of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) serving in the area. Impatiently, he waits for the moment food would be shared by camp officials.
“However, his rations are given to an adult, a woman and mother in particular, willing to help administer it to him. The woman feeds it to him alongside her own kids,” disclosed a relief worker on the camp.
Several metres from Aliyu’s perch, Bintu Umaru’s cry stabbed at the quiet like a desperate dirge. It pierced through her sister, Jariya’s teenage heart, evoking anguish she would rather forget. Jariya dreads Bintu’s hunger spasms.
Since their mother’s death during Boko Haram’s assault on their community in Bama, Jariya and her three-year-old sibling have been living in dire straits.
“She was few months old when Boko Haram killed mother. We lost contact with father too when Boko Haram attacked our community. They killed too many people. We didn’t see father afterwards. We don’t know if he is alive or dead,” she said.
Life was unbearable for the duo until they relocated from the forest that they fled into in the wake of Boko Haram’s assault on Bama. “We couldn’t get food to eat and we had no one to fend for us or give us money,” she said.
Save periodic donations by local and international humanitarian agencies, the sisters’ case may aggravate. Nonetheless, the reality of feeding and providing decent shelter for her three-year-old sister manifests scarily on Jariya. Thus she occasionally begs for food and money whenever they exhaust the little provisions they get.
Every month, the sisters eagerly await the hour when humanitarian personnel would beckon on parents and guardians to present their infants to receive rations of food and nutritional supplements.
In the decrepit tent they share, the ambiance is dour and stripped of comfort. All around the siblings, starvation booms eerily in shades of angst and despondency, masking their visage and other refugees’ faces.
Aliyu and the Umarus are among the 5.2 million people currently facing food insecurity in northeast Nigeria. However, as the government and humanitarian agencies struggle to contain the emergency, a fresh crisis looms in the guise of displaced persons trooping in from Cameroon.
Their arrival portends unforeseen disruptions to ongoing palliatives, particularly nutritional support to displaced infants and underage kids scattered across the northeast, according to a WFP scribe.
“In June, WFP, both directly and through partnerships, provided food assistance to approximately 1.1 million beneficiaries in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. This month we have assisted around 16,500 new arrivals and returnees in Bama, Gwoza and Ngala LGAs,” she said.
The refugees return from Cameroon puts additional pressure on the humanitarian response no doubt. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that between April and June this year, over 13,300 refugees have returned to northeast Nigeria. The influx of returnees is severely stressing limited existing services and aggravating the food and nutrition crisis, as returning refugees and IDPs are adding to the strain on both camps and host communities.
On July 19 and 22, two movements took place from Cameroonian’s Kolofata region with 155 people returning to Banki in Borno under two separate circumstances. The 56 people that arrived on July claimed that they returned voluntarily while the 59 individuals that returned on three days later were transported by Cameroonian military convoy.
They disclosed that they were rescued by the Cameroonian military from Boko Haram and held at the Maroura Salak Military Barrack in Cameroon for 11 months before being transported to Nigeria on July 22.
The UNHCR team in Banki described the physical condition of all the 155 people as satisfactory. Majority of the returnees are women and children. With the latest arrivals, the total number of individuals in Banki is close to 45,000, said UNHCR.
Many new arrivals dwell outside the camps, taking refuge in Banki, Muna, Muna-Dalti among others. Many more are scattered across Maiduguri. New arrivals are either renting houses or staying with host families, who are themselves living in very precarious conditions in the open and under trees.
The presence of the newcomers is putting a strain on meagre local food and water resources. But for the support of the state government and international aid groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) many kids would starve to death in the IDP camps.
Despite the flurry of bleak reports about the situation in Borno and other parts of northeast Nigeria, the situation, according to Mohammed Kanar, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) coordinator for the country’s northeast region, is improving. Kanar revealed that the Borno State government is doing a lot to alleviate the suffering of displaced persons living in the state’s IDP camps. According to him, despite the increase in the number of arrivals to the IDP camps, NEMA and state agencies are doing their best to ameliorate the displaced persons’ woes.
Notwithstanding relief interventions, IDPs besiege refugee camps from Borno’s strife-torn areas. In response, the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) in concert with the WFP, has devised a system by which new arrivals are registered and accommodated into the IDP camps’ feeding programme. But of the new arrivals, the welfare of malnourished infants, toddlers and other underage children are prioritised above all others because as minors, they are more vulnerable than others.
Of this vulnerable divide, greater attention is currently devoted to children under two years of age by WFP due to the organisation’s lean resources.
Thus displaced orphans like Aliyu and Bintu fall outside the loop of government and non-governmental organisation (NGO) dietary support for displaced minors.
Not your typical cash palliative
Besides offering nutritional support, WFP has also devised a cash-based palliative for starving mothers and kids. Several miles from Maiduguri, Mariam Labi, 34, recalled her past struggles to feed her three children. Labi’s life disintegrated in the wake of Boko Haram’s attack on her community, Manjin village in Gujba local government of Yobe state. In the attack, the insurgents killed her husband and first son.
She said: “I had to flee into the bush with my surviving children, to escape death in the hands of Boko Haram. From there, the soldiers helped us to Damaturu.”
As she took flight, Labi bemoaned the loss of her loved ones. She bewailed the farm land and cap-knitting business she was leaving behind.
Despite finding a nest in Damaturu, life became harder for Labi and children. “We had to beg for food and money,” she said.
Labi experienced relief when Kasaisa village was liberated in 2016, by the Nigerian Military. This guaranteed her access to the WFP’s cash based transfer food delivery modality. The cash palliative enables her purchase food, water and medical supplies for her family.
In the programme, Labi and other recipients receive a monthly transfer of N23,643.089 (about $75) to meet their food needs and those graduating from the food assistance programme would be enrolled into the planned early recovery and livelihood restoration programme.
Bad roads, lean harvests, other calamities
As areas become inaccessible UN and government relief workers are working to evolve a refined understanding of what people need; for instance, WFP is working with the government and other agencies such as UNICEF to urgently reach the most vulnerable.
The WFP claimed it is working in a highly complex environment marred by poor harvests and rainy season. Thus the need to act fast as hunger will only deepen in coming months.
“With diminished harvests caused by the devastating effects of drought and halted crop production in most farming districts, food supplies are terribly low. We face various constraints as we make provision for our dwindling food reserves,” said Borno state governor, Kashim Shettima.
In the worst-affected areas, a mishmash of poor sanitation, a prevalence of disease and lack of access to food, water and healthcare could create a famine-like situation if assistance is not urgently provided revealed a joint NGO and government assessment.
More worrisome is the persistent insecurity ravaging the region. Sporadic and sustained attacks by Boko Haram disrupt food supplies and seriously hinder access to basic services. It also limits agricultural activities, worsening an already dire food security situation, revealed a WFP Logistics head.
Indeed, farming has been severely affected as farmers are unable to access and cultivate their farmlands due to security threats. The ongoing violence has restricted livelihood activities and caused disruption to markets in the Lake Chad Basin region, significantly affecting the availability of food.
For the eighth consecutive year, the humanitarian crisis has deepened, resulting in the displacement of nearly 1.9 million people across northeast Nigeria, of which over 80 percent are from Borno State and 56 per cent are children, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The ongoing trend of refugee returns exerts additional pressure on the humanitarian response. The food security situation is expected to deteriorate in July–August due to persistent insecurity. This is compounded by the lean season.
Thus the number of people facing critical food insecurity in Nigeria’s northeast is expected to reach 5.2 million during the lean season including more than 50,000 people who could face starvation across Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.
Some 450,000 children across the northeast are projected to suffer acute malnutrition in alone, according to UNICEF. At least 90,000 of these severely malnourished children could starve to death this year – an average of almost 250 a day – if they do not receive treatment urgently, warned the UN child agency.
Giving returnees a humane welcome
Unexpected returns to Banki and other areas have created further emergency because those returning are coming back to a situation of internal displacement. The management of this situation is proving challenging to the government and the humanitarian community.
Over the last few weeks, UNHCR stepped up its advocacy efforts to ensure that the return process is conducted in conditions of safety and dignity, and in line with the provisions of the Tripartite Agreement signed between the agency and the Governments of Nigeria and Cameroon on March 2.
The Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Volker Turk and UNHCR’s Regional Representative based in Dakar, Senegal, Liz Ahua, visited Nigeria and held talks with federal and state officials on the plight of the returnees.
Thus upon arrival, the returnees are kept in the UNHCR transit facility and provided with food for three days while their shelters are being constructed for relocation. UNHCR also provided the returnees with essential non-food items including cooking pots, sleep mats, laundry detergent, slippers, and for women, sanitary pads.
Due to security concerns, returnees and IDPs are unable to access firewood. Those who make the effort to do so have been exposed to protection risks including violation and abuse. To mitigate the risk, UNHCR is providing charcoal to address this important protection challenge to women.
Recently, a government delegation led by the Director-General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mustapha Maihaja, was in Banki as part of continued efforts to support those returning from Cameroon.
During the visit, the delegation distributed relief items including food, mattresses, blankets and clothes donated by the government to refugee returnees and IDPs. The minister also announced that the redeployment of the police to Banki would take place in early September.
Despite these efforts, services and needs such as food, shelter, health, water and sanitation remain inadequate and formal education is yet to be restored as children have been out of school since the insurgency began more than seven years ago.
Freedom of movement is limited by continued security restriction in Banki, Pulka, Bama, Gwosa, Ngala and Damasak. This is significantly impacting expansion of services such as construction of additional shelters for people returning to newly liberated areas and affecting ability of returnees to engage in income generating activities.
According to the military, the decision to restrict movement and access to areas not cleared is a precautionary measure intended to prevent infiltration by the insurgents, protect refugee returnees, IDPs and humanitarian workers.
At the moment, the risk of mass starvation increases across northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, warned UNHCR. About 20 million people live in hard-hit areas where harvests have failed and acute malnutrition rates are increasing, particularly among children.
“We are raising our alarm level further by today warning that the risk of mass deaths from starvation among populations in the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria is growing,” said UNHCR spokesman, Adrian Edwards.
“This really is an absolutely critical situation that is rapidly unfolding across a large swathe of Africa from west to east,” he said.
A preventable catastrophe, possibly worse than that of 2011 when 260,000 people died of famine in the Horn of Africa, half of them children, “is fast becoming an inevitability,” warned Edwards.
Although UNHCR is scaling up its operations, it suffers a funding shortfall, with some country programmes only funded at between 3 and 11 percent, he said.
Millions face starvation as relief funding depletes
Millions of people, children in particular, in the northeast risk starvation in the wake of the WFP’s warning that it could in a few weeks, run out of funding to run aid programs.
Over the next six months, the organisation needs about $207 million to feed IDPs in Nigeria. At the moment, the programme is 13 percent funded for 2017 which is ‘extremely low’ by the estimation of agency staff.
International and local humanitarian groups have warned that the northeast is at the threshold of a famine situation, citing two years of missed crop harvests in Borno, a state fondly acknowledged as Nigeria’s “food basket.”
There is rising fear that the region could miss a third year of crop harvest even as torrential rains aggravate the risk of a pandemic, especially in IDP settlements where displaced persons live at subhuman level.
The number of people in northeast Nigeria without enough to eat is set to soar to 11 million this year and more than 120,000 could suffer famine-like conditions, if the situation persists according to humanitarian estimates. Amid such grim reality, the government is investigating allegations of food aid being stolen and sold by state officials in Borno even as it accuses international aid agencies of exaggerating hunger levels to get more funding from international donors.
Yet the U.N.’s $484 million 2016 appeal for Nigeria is barely over half funded.
As the humanitarian crisis deepens, a dark pall settles across northeastern skies. For instance, at the Muna IDPs Camp, nurses and aid workers grapple with curious anomalies, like Hauwa Abubakar, the 16-year old mother and widow who shared her son, Ahmedu’s ‘Plumpy Sup’ nutritional diet with him.
Subsequently, she pawned it off at a paltry fee.
“We caught her selling it to make money a couple of times. She said she needed the money to buy cosmetics,” said a nurse in the camp.
Today, Abubakar’s son is dead. He died of malnutrition. He was 18 months old.
