4.7M lack food access in Boko Haram-hit Nigeria region

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS, Nigeria (AA) - World Food Program (WFP) on Wednesday said at least 4.7 million people in Nigeria’s northeast had no access to food, and called on the international community to do more to assist people caught in the Boko Haram violence.

"What we need is for the international community not to turn away from Nigeria’s northeast.

"There's a lot going on in the world; it is easy to say that is one of those challenges but children and mothers are really suffering and can't get food," Ertharn Cousin, executive director of the UN agency, said in a video tweet.

WFP said it had launched efforts to supply food and health support to the people in need in the region.

The mechanism includes distributing cash to displaced people to buy foods of their choice in areas where food markets are functioning, it added.

"Where markets are not functioning, WFP provides life-saving foods," according to a footage showing the agency's works which cover remote villages of Borno and Yobe, two of the three states mostly ravaged by the seven-year-old insurgency.

On Tuesday, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched a $3.3 billion global appeal to cater for some 48 million children caught in various conflicts and humanitarian emergencies across the world, including Nigeria's northeast region.

"UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children sets out the agency’s 2017 appeal totaling $3.3 billion, and its goals in providing children with access to safe water, nutrition, education, health and protection in 48 countries across the globe,” according to a statement by the aid agency.

UNICEF said an estimated 7.5 million children would face severe acute malnutrition across the majority of appeal countries, including almost half-a-million each in northeast Nigeria and Yemen where insurgencies have displaced millions.