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Maiduguri, Nigeria – Sometimes it was in Zara Ali as if her daughter was born already sick in the uterus.
During a recent weekday, the 30-year-old mother seized the toddler in her knees when she was seated before a government hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno in northeast Nigeria. The two had just finished another meeting with a doctor in the hope of healing the child.
Although grumpy like any other sick two -year -old child, it is the hair of amina – brownish and apparently bald in several places – it is a visible sign of malnutrition that doctors had already diagnosed. However, despite months of treatment with a ready-to-eat paste rich in protein, Ali says that progress has been slow and that his daughter may require more visits to the hospital.
“She falls ill, improves a little, then falls sick again,” she said, frustrated. Alla Ali and his family had to move several times several times because of the conflict of Boko Haram. They were moved from the city of Damboa, about 89 km (55 miles), and now live in Maiduguri as a displaced persons.
Adding to its misfortunes is the reduction of access to care in recent months, as several help clinics that it visit for free treatment have started to develop operations, or in some cases, have completely closed their services. “Honestly, their interventions were really useful, and we need them to come back and help our children,” Ali said.
Amina is only five million children in the northeast and northwest of Nigeria suffering malnutrition In what experts called the region Most serious food crisis In the years. The disturbed northeast region has been, for a and a half decade, has been prey to a conflict led by the armed group Boko Haram, and prolonged insecurity disrupted food supplies. In the northwest, bandit groups cause similar upheavals, which leads to a hunger crisis that the governments of the States find it difficult to contain.
This year, the massive and brutal financing cuts are aggravated, which have often intervened to help by providing food assistance to the 2.3 million Northeast Northeast moved. Many of these organizations depended on the funds of the United States, which, since February, has reduced contributions To help programs worldwide about 75%.
The World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations Food Assistance Agency and the world’s largest food aid supplier have been forced to close more than half of all its nutritional clinics across the Northeast in August, Emmanuel Bpenimana, who heads northeast Nigeria operations, told Al Jezeera to the agency site in Maiduguri. Some 300,000 children are cut off from the necessary nutritional supplements, he said.
Already, in July, WFP distributed its latest grain reserves for adults and inappropriate families, added Bpenimana, standing from a row of half -empty tent warehouses. Some men withdrew the tents cereal bags and loaded them on trucks to neighboring Chad, a country also taken in complex crises. For Nigeria, he said, who is in the lighter season before harvest, there was no more food.
Insecurity fueling the food crisis
Northeast Nigeria should be a food basket for the country, due to its fertile vegetation and savannah adapted to the cultivation of nuts and grains. However, since Boko Haram’s conflict broke out, food supply has decreased. Climatic shocks in the increasingly arid region have added to problems.
Boko Haram aims to control the territory and has been active since 2011. Group operations are mainly in Borno, in the northeast states and through the border in Niger, Chad and Cameroon. He acquired global reputation in 2014 for the removal of students Seagull. The internal fractures and the military response of the Nigeria have reduced The group’s ability in recent years, but it still controls a territory, and a escaped faction is affiliated with ISIL (ISIS). More than 35,000 people were killed in attacks by the group and more than 2 million are moved.
Before insecurity, families in the region, especially outside the maiduguri urban metropolis, survived subsistence agriculture, plowing plots of land and selling an excess harvest. These days, it is hardly an option. The soldiers have been treated in cities garnished since 2019 to avoid losses of troops. It is difficult to find a culture space in the midst of the trenches and safety barriers built in such places, the security analyst Kabir Adamu of the intelligence company Beacon Consulting, told Al Jazeera. Those who venture outside cities are likely to be targeted by armed fighters.
In rural areas not under the army control, Boko Haram operates as a kind of government, operating villagers to generate money.
“Armed actors collect taxes to use land for agriculture,” said Adamu, adding that for rural farmers, these taxes are often heavy on the pockets. In more unlucky scenarios, farmers were killed if they were considered as military informants. In January, 40 farmers were executed in the city of Baga. The fishermen were also targeted.
The vicious circle has repeated for years, and the composition effect is the current food crisis, according to experts.
Only 45 minutes from Maiduguri, in the city of Konduga, the farmer Mustapha Modu, 55, plowed the land in anticipation of precipitation on a fresh weekday. He had just returned from a short trip to Maiduguri, braving risky highways to buy sowing in the hope of a good season.
Even when Modu planted, it feared that the harvest would be impossible. There are widespread fears that Boko Haram fighters often wait and do not pass on farmers to grasp the crops. At one point, he said, his family of three wives and 17 children depended on the documents, but those who barely reached Konduga, so he had to do something.
“We haven’t seen them in our village for a long time,” said Modu about food aid distributors. “This is why I managed to get sowing, even if the insurgents are always on our neck.”
Help cuts risk more “violence”
The UN and its agencies were at the center of Washington aid cuts in April, which led PAM to receive zero aid from the United States this year, said Bigenimana. Like the United States, other donors such as the European Union and the United Kingdom have also reduced aid, instead of diverting money to security while tensions remain high during the Russian War in Ukraine.
The agency responded to some 1.3 million displaced people and others in difficult to access areas, marginal locations accessible only by helicopter. For children, the agency has managed several nutritional clinics and supported government hospitals with ready -to -use foods, a mixture of protein produced mainly in peanuts, which can quickly stabilize a poorly nourished child.
The funding discounts have caused the rationing of WFP to start supplies in recent months. In July, the resources in Nigeria were completely emptied. At least $ 130 million is necessary for the agency to get back on the right track with its operations here, said Bigenimana. The lack of prolonged support, he said, could endanger more people.
“People are trying to go for firewood to sell outside the secure points,” said the manager. “Even when we delay distribution on normal days, people protest. So we expect it, and it could become violent. ”
Several other NGOs across the region have also been struck by the Trump Aid Cutts. They have not only provided food aid or nutritional treatment, but also medical, and crucial services vaccines Children need life in the first years of life to protect themselves against infectious diseases such as measles.
Analysts like Adamu, however, criticize help groups for what he said to be their inability to create a system where people do not count on food aid. In Borno, the government of the State, since 2021, has gradually closed the camps for people displaced internally and reinstalled some in their communities. The goal, supports the government, is to reduce dependence and restore dignity. However, the movement faces widespread While assistance agencies and rights organizations stress that certain regions are still not safe and that displaced people simply move in other camps.
“They should have supported the government on state security reforms,” said Adamu. This, he said, would have been a more lasting way to empower people and allegedly attenuated the food crisis.
Rain time, disease time
For the moment, the food crisis seems to be continuing, and children in particular seem to bring the weight, especially since heavy rains arrive.
Muhammad Bashir Abdullahi, an officer with doctors of medical aid without borders, known by his French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera that more children have been admitted to the organization of organization in Maiduguri since early August. It is possible, he said, that the services closed in other organizations contributed to higher figures.
“We used to admit 200 children each week, but last week we admitted up to 400 children,” said Abdullahi. MSF, which does not depend on American aid, has recorded more than 6,000 malnutrition children in its maiduguri nutrition center since January. As a rule, children receive protein paste, or in acute cases, a special milk solution. Abdullahi said more children should be admitted in the coming weeks.
Back at the government hospital where Ali was looking for treatment for her daughter, another woman stopped outside the clinic with her children, baby boys.
One of them was sick, the mother, Fatima Muhammad, 33, complained and suffers from a swollen head. It is the third hospital it visited because two other facilities managed by NGOs have been exceeded. Unfortunately, his son had not accepted the protein paste, a sign that medical experts say that acute malnutrition signals.
“His brother is already seated and is already crawling, but he still cannot sit,” said Muhammad, his face hugged in a frown. She blamed herself not to eat enough during her pregnancy, even if she was barely a choice. “I think that’s what affected them. I just need help for my son, nothing more. ”
