Atiku’s aide says gets bombarded with requests to buy basic necessities
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Daniel Bwala, Media Aide to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, has recounted how he gets up to 30 telephone calls daily from suffering Nigerians seeking financial help.
Bwala, a former federal lawmaker, lamented the high cost of basic necessities, including food, transportation, other goods and services.
“Nigerians are suffering; men, this is too much. High cost of everything; food items, transportation, goods and services, medicals, school fees.
“[There is] no day I get less than 30 calls, people are asking for just these simple things to survive in a nation endowed with every riches in natural and human resources. God help us,” he said in a Twitter post, per reporting by Vanguard.
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4.3m people in North East face severe hunger
Severe hunger is affecting 4.3 million people in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe – all in the North East ravaged by Islamist jihadists for 14 years running.
Matthias Schmale, United Nations top humanitarian official in Nigeria, in June told journalists in Geneva that, among them, the number of children under-five at risk of life-threatening severe acute malnutrition has doubled in one year to 700,000.
“I have been to Borno and the other two states several times. I’ve seen mothers fighting for lives of their malnourished children in nutrition stabilisation centres.
“Those of us who are parents must imagine what it’s like when you cannot ensure your children have enough to eat,” Schmale lamented.
He said the “catastrophic” situation is primarily the result of more than a decade of insecurity linked to non-state armed groups, which prevent people from farming and earning income from the land.
Another harmful factor is climate change and extreme weather impacts, he added
Last year saw the worst floods in 10 years in Nigeria, which affected more than 4.4 million people across the country, not just the North East.
Soaring prices of food, fuel and fertilisers have exacerbated the crisis, and the response remains severely underfunded.
Schmale said out of the $1.3 billion in humanitarian funding needed for the region, only 25 per cent has been secured so far.
