Famine looms

APREVENTABLE, human-manufactured disaster appears to be unfolding in north-east Nigeria. One small state in Nigeria has more displaced people than the entire refugee influx that arrived in Europe last year. The brutal armed conflict has sent a million children out of school.

Health services have been decimated and cholera and polio, once eradicated, have returned. The violence of Boko Haram, the jihadist group that still controls parts of the region, is characterised by child killing, abductions and sexual abuse.

Farmers are unable to harvest their crops and aid agencies say they are unable to reach isolated communities. The region is now entering its third season without a harvest. There are clear signs a famine looms while the international community stands by, watches and waits.

Now Save the Children is warning there is a “real and immediate” threat to the lives of 400000 children who are malnourished and starving.

Money from Nigeria laundered in UK “should go to helping starving children”. It is a good sign the UN has doubled its humanitarian funding appeal for north-east Nigeria to $1 billion. Heartening too that Britain’s Department for International Development is “scaling up investment”. Yet it must be remembered last year 38percent of $484million the UN hoped would be donated by wealthier countries for the African nation materialised.

British aid needs to be spent wisely and we need sanctions, not rewards, for City institutions that aid capital flight. The proposal is a good way of returning money stolen from Africa’s poorest – and filling the gap between rhetoric and reality in the financing of humanitarian assistance.