Ukraine war diverts attention from Nigeria’s humanitarian crisis

Inside a school-turned-internal displacement camp in Bama, a town in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, Modu Aji sits inside one of the hundreds of tents dotting the site.

The 45-year-old tailor is among the thousands to have found refuge here after fleeing a 2014 attack on the town by Boko Haram, an armed group that has been waging an armed campaign in the region for more than a decade.
Hundreds of people were killed in the assault. The Boko Haram fighters also destroyed houses, including Aji’s. His thriving tailoring store was set ablaze, too.

“I doubt I will ever recover from my losses, the shop and sewing machines,” Aji said at the camp at the Government Senior Science Secondary School (GSSSS).

“I lost everything.”
Aji is one of the 5.5 million people in the region in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations.

The world body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has this year appealed for more than $1bn to provide aid but has managed to raise only about 40 percent of the sum – partly because international donors have shifted attention to countries like Ukraine, which has been fighting off a Russian invasion since late February.

“The war in Ukraine is the dominating crisis that takes attention from places like Nigeria,” said Matthias Schmale, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria.
“We will see more children and adults dying if we don’t provide the minimum humanitarian support,” Schmale said. “So, if we don’t get the financial support we need for at least food, serious hunger will be the consequence for thousands of people.”

Camp closures
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions have become internally displaced since Boko Haram launched its campaign in 2009, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and causing a near-total breakdown in educational and healthcare services.

Across the northeastern region, the violence has destroyed schools, hospitals and other social amenities, leaving the affected communities – especially women and children – in dire need of help.

Source: Aljazeera