Nearly 200 die in a month at Boko Haram displaced camp

Abuja (AFP) – Nearly 200 people have died in the last month at a camp for people made homeless by Boko Haram violence in northeast Nigeria, an aid agency said Wednesday, warning of a growing malnutrition crisis.

A Doctors Without Borders (MSF) team on Tuesday visited the camp, home to around 24,000 people including 15,000 children, and found what it called “a catastrophic humanitarian emergency” unfolding.

One in five of over 800 children it examined had severe acute malnutrition while 16 severely malnourished children “at immediate risk of death” were referred to its in-patient treatment centre.

At least 188 people have died in the internally displaced people (IDP) camp in Bama, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Maiduguri, since May 23 — about six a day — mainly from diarrhoea and malnutrition, MSF said in a statement.

A total of 1,233 graves, many of them of for children, had been dug near the camp in the past year, the agency said.

“This is the first time MSF has been able to access Bama but we already know the needs of the people there are beyond critical,” said MSF head of mission in Nigeria Ghada Hatim.

“We are treating malnourished children in medical facilities in Maiduguri and see the trauma on the faces of our patients who have witnessed and survived many horrors.”

– ‘Walking corpses’ –

The Borno state government and international aid agencies have previously warned about acute food shortages for IDPs in northeast Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad region.

On June 15, the Borno state government said it had transferred nearly 700 people, most of them children, from Bama to Maiduguri for treatment for severe malnutrition.

Sixty-one young children and babies were said to be “critically malnourished”.

A civilian vigilante and a soldier based in the remote town of Banki, 60 kilometres from Bama near the Cameroon border, told AFP this month at least 10 people were “starving to death” every day.

The vigilante said 376 people had been buried in the last three months and those still alive were like “walking corpses”.

– Security issues –

Boko Haram, whose seven-year Islamist insurgency in northeast Nigeria has left at least 20,000 dead and displaced more than 2.6 million, controlled swathes of territory in the northeast in 2014.

But the Nigerian government has said IDPs housed in camps or host communities can return after a military counter-offensive pushed the militants out of captured towns and villages.

Despite assurances the northeast is largely clear of the rebels, sporadic attacks continue and security remains an issue, while houses, businesses and farms have largely been destroyed.

Domestic and international aid agencies are mainly based in Maiduguri and dependent on Nigerian army assistance to access camps outside the city.

The Borno state governor Kashim Shettima last week ordered police to investigate reports that relief material, including bags of rice meant for IDPs, was being stolen.

The UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF, said it has been working with its partners in Bama since March and has provided health and nutrition support for some 19,000 people.

Its primary health care centre sees on average 140 patients a day for conditions ranging from malaria, respiratory infections and diarrhoea, as well as malnutrition screening and treatment.

Bodies of 42 fishermen butchered by Boko Haram pulled from Lake Chad

Boko Haram have again killed innocent fishermen from villages close to Lake Chad(

International Business Times – The bodies of 42 fishermen, who were killed by the Islamist group, Boko Haram, have been pulled from Lake Chad in Cameroon, the country’s military has announced.

The men had been seized on 8 June from the village of Darak, located near the Nigerian border, by militants who also killed 10 fishermen in nearby Touboun Ali on 6 June and 32 soldiers in Bosso, Niger on 3 June.

“Cameroonian sailors and villagers… saw several bodies floating on the water and immediately alerted security forces,” Cololenl Nomo Jean Claude told the African news website the Daily Sabah. “We recovered 42 bodies from the water between Saturday and Sunday. After identification, we found they were of Cameroonian, Nigerian and Chadian nationality. The bodies were immediately handed over to the families for burial.”

Boko Haram has fought a seven-year battle to form an Islamist caliphate in the region in which around 20,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million people displaced. Around 50,000 have been displaced in south eastern Niger in the last few days due to an onslaught by the group, according to Fox News.

This has prompted a doubling of food aid to southern Niger, the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) announced on Tuesday (14 June). “Many people have walked from 10 km to 40 kms (6 to 25 miles),” said WFP Niger deputy country director Belkacem Machane in a statement published by Reuters.

“They are arriving in a state of shock, and urgently need food, shelter, water – assistance with their most basic needs. They have now reached the end of their rope.”

Niger, Chad, Benin and Cameroon have all joined an international task-force to fight the insurgents, but often ordinary civilians are the ones who suffer most. BokoHaram has bombed many mosques, transport hubs and even refugee centres, as well as snatching over 200 schoolgirls from Chibok and selling them into slavery.

In March (2016) Cameroon announced the death penalty for 89 members of Boko Haram, a decision dismissed as counter-productive by anti-terrorism experts.

UN, Nigeria Agree to Cameroon’s Return of 80,000 Refugees

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria says it has agreed to Cameroon’s voluntary return of 80,000 Nigerian refugees who have fled the Boko Haram Islamic insurgency. Nigerian officials had said Cameroon was threatening to force the repatriation. Cameroon previously has dumped thousands on the border. Nigerian emergency agency spokesman Sani Datti says Sunday that an agreement for their return “voluntarily and in a dignified manner” has been signed by the UNHCR refugee agency, Nigeria and Cameroon.

It may be recalled that in March 2016, Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau signed a communiqué at the end of a bilateral meeting with officials of Cameroon Interior Ministry on issues related to exchange of information on the organization and duties of Interior Ministry of both countries, and also on the return of Nigerian refugees back home which would involve a tripartite agreement between Nigeria, Cameroon and United Nations Commission on Human Rights and Maritime Piracy.

Last month, Nigerians who had returned home were blocked from returning to Cameroon though they complained they did not have enough water as temperatures soared over 100 degrees (42 degrees Celsius). A new influx will tax Nigerian officials struggling to cater for 2.1 million people displaced within the country. The U.N. says.

Nigeria: 2nd Chibok girl rescued was not taken from school

Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari, second right, receives Amina Ali, the rescued Chibok school girl, at the Presidential palace in Abuja, Nigeria, Thursday, May. 19, 2016. The first Chibok teenager to escape from Boko Haram's Sambisa Forest stronghold was flown to Abuja on Thursday and met with Nigeria's president, even as her freedom adds pressure on the government to do more to rescue 218 other missing girls. (AP Photo/Azeez Akunleyan) — Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari, second right, receives Amina Ali, the rescued Chibok school girl, at the Presidential palace in Abuja, Nigeria, Thursday, May. 19, 2016. The first Chibok teenager to escape from Boko Haram’s Sambisa Forest stronghold was flown to Abuja on Thursday and met with Nigeria’s president, even as her freedom adds pressure on the government to do more to rescue 218 other missing girls. (AP Photo/Azeez Akunleyan)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A second “Chibok girl” rescued by Nigeria’s military in a forest battle with Islamic extremists was kidnapped from her home village and is not among 218 students missing from the 2014 mass abduction by Boko Haram that sparked worldwide outrage.

The girl is one of three daughters of a pastor of the Nigerian branch of the U.S.-based Church of the Brethren, kidnapped by Boko Haram in two separate attacks, community leader Pogu Bitrus told The Associated Press. It’s an indication of how widespread and ubiquitous are the Islamic extremists’ tactic of kidnapping girls and young women used as sex slaves and boys and young men forced to join their fight to create an Islamic caliphate.

Army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said soldiers freed the girl after a Thursday night battle in the northeastern Sambisa Forest in which it liberated 97 women and children and killed 35 extremists. He claimed she was among missing girls abducted more than two years ago from a boarding school in Chibok.

Bitrus said the girl, believed to be about 15 when she was seized, was a student at the same school but was home on vacation at the time of the mass kidnapping. She was later snatched from her village of Madagali, near the town of Chibok, he said, but did not know when exactly.

The first Chibok teenager to escape, along with her 4-month-old baby, was discovered by hunters wandering on the fringes of the Sambisa Forest on Tuesday. On Thursday, Amina Ali Nkeki, 19, was flown to Abuja to meet with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari.

Parents of the kidnapped girls, the Bring Back Our Girls movement and aid workers all have criticized the Nigerian government and military for their handling of the development, with Refugees International charging her escape is being politicized and that she should not be paraded in public but getting urgent medical care for sexual abuse and psychosocial counseling.

Ali has revealed that a few of the girls died in captivity but most remain under heavy guard in the forest, according to family doctor Idriss Danladi. The AP does not identify suspected victims of sexual assault but named Ali after she appeared on TV alongside the president.

Ali’s escape has renewed hopes of saving the other girls and strengthened demands of the Bring Back Our Girls movement that the government act in concert with the international community to swiftly free them. Friday is their 767th day in captivity.

Nigeria Security Conference: Four Key Takeaways

French President Francois Hollande, second from left, and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, second from right, at a regional security summit in Abuja, Nigeria, May 14. Boko Haram remains a key threat to countries in West Africa.

BY CONOR GAFFEY | Newsweek/

Boko Haram was first on the list of priorities at an international security summit held in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Saturday. The Second Regional Security Summit, attended by French President François Hollande and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, among others, came two years after the first conference was convened in Paris.

Since then, Nigeria and its neighbors have made progress in tackling the threat posed by Boko Haram. A Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF)—consisting of troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin—has been battling the group for more than a year and has reduced the territory it controls, despite the fact that Boko Haram continues to carry out suicide bombings on a sporadic basis.

Here are four key takeaways from the conference:

1. Libya Is the Key to Severing the Boko Haram-ISIS Connection

Since March 2015, Boko Haram has rebranded itself as Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) following a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). But despite this aesthetic change, it is difficult to gauge how much of an impact this affiliation has had on Boko Haram’s modus operandi, particularly with ISIS’s main hub being thousands of miles away in Syria and Iraq.

This could change if ISIS is able to increase its influence and reach in Libya. ISIS is believed to havethousands of fighters in the lawless North African state and controls the coastal city of Sirte. “If we see Daesh establish a stronger presence in Libya, that feels much more to people here [in Nigeria] like a direct communications route, that is likely to step up the practical collaboration between the two groups,” Hammond said at the conference.

2. Europe Still Sees Boko Haram as a Threat

Since its inceptions, Boko Haram’s key objective—the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria—has been largely domestic. In 2015, the group extended its attacks to other countries in the region, particularly those participating in the MNJTF. The fallout from the security summit makes clear, however, that European leaders remain worried about the group.

Hollande stated that, despite the “impressive” gains made against Boko Haram under the administration of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, the group “remains a threat.” European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini also confirmed that 50 million euros ($56.6 million) had been set aside to assist the MNJTF in its mission.

3. Boko Haram Is Not Nigeria’s Only Problem

The Buhari administration’s success at tackling Boko Haram—the group has now been confined to the remote Sambisa Forest in the northeast Borno state after its territorial gains were rolled back—means that some of the other security threats it faces have come into sharper focus.

One particular issue rearing its head at present is the revival in militancy among groups in the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s oil output has been severely hit by attacks on pipelines, and a newly-formed group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers recently shut down a facility run by U.S. company Chevron after an attack, cutting off 35,000 barrels per day. Shell has also evacuated staff from the Bonga oil field in the region as the threat of attack grows.

Hammond described the events in the Niger Delta as “a major concern” and said that simply relocating Nigerian military forces to the region wouldn’t deal with the root problems. “Buhari has got to show as a president from the north that he is not ignoring the Delta, that he is engaging with the challenges in the Delta,” said the British foreign secretary.

4. The Chibok Girls Continue to Haunt Nigeria

Upon his presidential inauguration in May 2015, Buhari said that Nigeria would not have defeated Boko Haram until all abductees—including the Chibok girls—were rescued from the group. It has been more than two years since Boko Haram militants abducted 276 girls from their school in Chibok, Borno state, and 219 remain missing. Despite recent glimmers of hope—such as a proof-of-life video released in April in which several of the girls were identified—it is not clear that Nigeria is any closer to rescuing the girls.

Buhari stressed in his speech to the summit that Nigeria has a “firm commitment to safely rescue and reunite the abducted Chibok girls, and indeed all other abductees with their families.” But in December 2015, the Nigerian president admitted that he had “no firm intelligence” on their whereabouts.

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