US PLEDGES $32.5 MILLION TO EASE HUNGER IN BORNO, NORTHERN NIGERIA. (PHOTO).

 US pledges $32.5 million to ease hunger in Borno, northern Nigeria

The United States has approved $32.5 million in humanitarian aid to Nigeria, targeting hunger in the country’s conflict-torn north, particularly Borno state.

The U.S. mission to Nigeria said the funding will deliver food and nutrition support to internally displaced people in the northeast, where communities have been battered by more than a decade of insurgency.

The aid package is expected to reach more than 764,000 people, including 41,569 pregnant and breastfeeding women and 43,235 children.

Borno state has been hardest hit, with aid agencies warning that an “unprecedented hunger crisis” could leave 1.3 million people without food and force the shutdown of at least 150 nutrition clinics. In Maiduguri, Intersos, an Italian humanitarian group, now runs the only in-patient malnutrition facility still open.

Margot van der Velden, the World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, warned in July that funding shortages had pushed the agency to suspend food assistance in parts of West and Central Africa, leaving millions vulnerable. Food stocks in Nigeria and other affected countries were projected to run out by September.

Northern Nigeria is also reeling from rising insecurity that has killed about 35,000 civilians and displaced over two million, violent clashes between farmers and herders in the northwest and north-central regions have further strained food supplies.