United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has approved nearly $104 million to address the needs of an estimated 8.7 million people at risk in Nigeria.
The agency, in a statement, said it will provide the additional humanitarian assistance to help people being driven from their homes due to insecurity and violence.
The fund, it said, will cover food, health, nutrition, shelter, protection, water, sanitation, and hygiene, and humanitarian coordination programmes.
Since 2015, violence and insecurity have driven people from their homes and exacerbated humanitarian needs in northern Nigeria.
‘The Covid-19 pandemic has further impacted food insecurity, raised protection concerns including the risk of gender-based violence, and reduced access to basic necessities such as safe drinking water, nutrition, and shelter’, USAID said in a statement.
In January, the U.S. agency and the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, agreed to commit $45 million to improve primary health care services for the next five years.
The agency also gave its assurance of being committed to helping people affected by conflict in the country.
‘The U.S. calls on other donors to do the same by providing life-saving assistance to vulnerable Nigerians and the communities that host them’, the agency added.
‘The United States is the single largest donor for the humanitarian response in Nigeria, having provided nearly $505 million in fiscal years 2020 and 2021’.
In related development, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and partners say one billion U.S. dollars is needed to help 6.4 million vulnerable people in Nigeria this year.
The UN agency made this known in its 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for Nigeria.
The HRP aims to improve internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp conditions and services; alleviate acute food insecurity and related severe vulnerabilities; strengthen self-reliant livelihoods control and prevent communicable disease outbreak; and achieve alternative and durable solutions.
Most of the aid, according to OCHA, will be used to address humanitarian crisis in the northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
Due to the Boko Haram insurgency, over two million people, including around 150,000 elderlies, are displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
In addition, more than five million people in northeast Nigeria risk acute hunger in the upcoming lean season because of escalating conflict and livelihood disruptions due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Furthermore, UNICEF, in a 2018 report on the state of nutrition in northeast Nigeria, revealed that one in every five children faced the problem of severe malnutrition.
Source: USAID
Photo source: MSF/Abdulkareem Yakubu
