Nigeria fears theft of food by officials

Children dying of starvation owing to lack of aid supplies

MAIDUGURI // Children who escaped Boko Haram’s insurgency are now dying of starvation in displacement camps in north-east Nigeria’s largest city as the government investigates the theft of food aid by officials. The displaced have staged protests over the past week. In one, women blocked the road linking Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, and Kano city for five hours, shouting that their children were starving and they had no drinking water as temperatures soared above 40°C.

Up to 25 per cent of children in a 110-bed feeding centre are dying, said Medecins Sans Frontieres spokeswoman Shaista Aziz. Dozens of babies and children with matchstick-like limbs fill the centre’s tents.

Families “are completely reliant on food distributions”, said Dr Natalie Roberts, a manager for the charity.

MSF’s therapeutic feeding programme in Maiduguri, where the most malnourished children are treated, “has quadrupled in size in the last weeks, but each time it expands it becomes rapidly full”, Dr Roberts said. In one camp last month, 20 children under the age of five died in a week, she said.

At the Farm Centre refugee camp on Maiduguri’s outskirts, residents said there had been at least one month when they did not receive any food.

Nigeria’s senate last week announced an investigation into allegations that food aid was being diverted.