The United Kingdom (UK) has promised to assist some nine countries and regions including Nigeria with the sum of £47 million as aid to provide food, nutrition, water, and shelter for impoverished families. In a statement on Thursday, by the Deputy British High Commission, tagged, “COVID-19: UK pledges an extra £47 million of aid for families hit by hunger around the world including £7m to Nigeria”. The UK in the statement, stated that it was lobbying international donors to assist in making available more funding, and requested for all conflict parties to allow safe, sustained, and unhindered humanitarian access to all people in need of assistance.
The commission said that £7m out of the funds will be allocated to Nigeria via the World Food Programme and is targeted to get to 430,000 individuals for food support and nutrition support for 108 days.
“Many Nigerians affected by the conflict in the north are suffering from lack of food, insecurity, and high malnutrition rate.
“The amount of people in need of humanitarian assistance in the northeast Nigeria is also increasing, having risen to 8.9 million people as well make way into 2021″, the statement added.
The UK Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab stated that, “Hundreds of millions of people living in the world’s largest humanitarian crises are finding it difficult to survive, threatened by conflict, starvation and the worst of all, the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The statement highlighted that new data from the United Nations (UN) showed that humanitarian crises were worsening around the world, as 235 million people expected to require pressing assistance as compared to 175m people at the beginning of 2020.
It also revealed that food, nutrition, water, childhood vaccinations and shelter are all needed to assist families facing humanitarian crisis in the world.
