Independence day marked by crises

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s president promised Saturday to drive hunger out of Africa’s most populous nation but made no mention of a conflict-driven famine threatening to kill tens of thousands of children in northeast Nigeria.

The United Nations has warned that 75,000 children could die of starvation in a year if speedy action isn’t taken in northeastern Nigeria, where underfunded aid agencies say 4.4 million people need food and 65,000 are living in famine-like conditions amid an Islamic insurgency by Boko Haram extremists.

Children with matchstick limbs and protruding ribs already are dying but an official for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, Muhammad Kanar, denied Friday that the region had even one case of malnutrition. He spoke after the U.N. Children’s Fund doubled its funding appeal to $115 million, calling it one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari made no reference Saturday to the food emergency in a speech marking the West African nation’s 56th anniversary of independence from British colonizers.

Instead, he painted a rosy picture of military successes against Nigeria’s homegrown extremists in the northeast, repeating that Boko Haram “was defeated” by December 2015. “Now, residents in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States ... go about their daily business in relative safety,” he claimed.

Aid workers and residents of Borno, the birthplace of Boko Haram, say they fear to venture out of Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast, for fear of attack.

Famine and malnutrition are among many emergencies hitting Nigeria, a nation that lost its position as Africa’s biggest oil producer as militant attacks in the south slashed petroleum production. Nigeria also is beset by separatists in the southeast, a deadly conflict in the Middle Belt pitting mainly Muslim nomadic herders against Christian farmers, and mounting crime including kidnappings for ransom.