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Ten years ago, the risk of jihadist violence forced Falmata Mustapha to abandon the fertile land her circle of relatives had cultivated for generations on the outskirts of Gonglugong village in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state.
Their only option was to paint a plot of land much less fertile but at least relatively, as it was within the safe perimeter of the village.
The jihadist insurgency in Nigeria has evolved since its inception in 2009, with Boko Haram militants caving in to army offensives and forced to fight rivals connected to the Islamic State group.
But for farmers like Mustapha, the sour war remains a constant risk that helps keep him off his land, like many of the more than two million people displaced by the conflict.
“This plot doesn’t yield much, but where we are here, at least Boko Haram will come and kill you,” the 60-year-old farmer said.
Beyond the army checkpoints surrounding and protecting Gongulong, the fields have incredibly lush vegetation due to the rainy season, but they are still off-limits.
Much of the northeast’s food-producing land is at the mercy of jihadist insurgents.
The attempt to create an Islamic caliphate in the region has claimed more than 40,000 lives and created one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century.
“Just this morning, Boko Haram attacked several farmers. Thank God they didn’t kill them and just took their money,” Mustapha said, raising his hands to the sky.
Two years have passed, but the grandmother has forgotten the day in December 2020 when jihadists massacred 43 farmers in a box of rice in the nearby village of Koshebe.
Since the massacre, only a few people have crossed army barricades and protective trenches to paint the earth “with (their) worry in their stomachs,” he said.
It also means accepting the threat of being accused by the army of participating with jihadist fighters and being arrested.
“This is a dilemma for farmers, who have to choose between suffering to feed their young or putting themselves in danger to bring food back by going to the other side of the trenches,” the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance said. . (OCHA) in Nigeria, Trond Jensen.
Mustapha may not be the last time he had enough money to eat meat, or when his children can still eat three full meals a day.
But, he says, he’s “lucky” because at least he has to land.
This is not the case for millions of other people in the region who have completely abandoned agriculture and taken refuge in so-called garrison villages that are meant to provide more security.
About 1. 74 million children under the age of five are severely malnourished in northeastern Nigeria, according to the UN.
The medical centers that treat most critical patients are packed with young people in need of urgent help, their hunger shown through their protruding ribs and swollen bellies.
“It’s all about war,” said Amina Abdulahi, 42, as she hugged her granddaughter on a steel bed at a medical center for severely malnourished youth in Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state.
Rahama has the build of a baby of a few days. But his deep gaze and wide-open black eyes do not deceive: the little one born six months ago.
It looked even more fragile next to the huge elephant painted on the wall of the center supported through the humanitarian organization Plan International.
Doctors have been looking to grow the child for 3 days, as well as 40 other young people whose bodies are deformed by hunger.
“In our village, we have lost dozens of young people in recent years,” says grandmother Abdulahi, her face shrouded in a plum-colored veil.
Some nights, she says, she puts her 8 grandchildren to bed hungry and waits for them to fall asleep, exhausted by her incessant crying.
“Every year is worse than the previous year of the protracted conflict,” said Dr. Hauwal Larai Goni, public health official in Yobe state.
The 13-year insurgency is mainly due to the region’s food crisis.
But the recent floods that destroyed thousands of farms in the region, double-digit inflation from the coronavirus pandemic and then the Russian offensive in Ukraine are additional factors worsening an “already catastrophic” situation, he said.
According to the UN, some 370,000 children under the age of five are at the highest mortality threat and 5,000 young people are at risk of dying without prompt investment to respond to the crisis.
CMA/PMA/LHD/RI