UN says Boko Haram killed 350,000 people in Nigeria

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By Salim Yunusa

The report estimates that through the end of 2020, the conflict in the North-east will have resulted in nearly 350,000 deaths, with 314,000 of those from indirect causes.

Insurgency-related conflicts claimed the lives of almost 350,000 lives in the North-eastern part of Nigeria up till the end 2020, a new report of the United Nations Develop Programme (UNDP) has said.

The report said insurgency directly resulted to the death of 35,000 people in three states in the region, while an estimated 314,000 people died “from indirect causes” in the entire North-east region.

Since 2009, the North-east has been the theatre of the violent campaigns of the Islamic extremist group, Boko Haram, its breakaway group, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP), and counter-insurgency forces.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in an August 2019 report, said insurgency activities of extremist Islamic groups had led to the death of an estimated 35,000 persons in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states.

The UNDP confirmed, in its latest report released on June 24, 2021, that “national data” showed that “conflict has directly resulted in the deaths of 35,000 people in the states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe as a result of battle or one-sided violence since 2009″.

“The report estimates that through the end of 2020, the conflict in the north-east will have resulted in nearly 350,000 deaths, with 314,000 of those from indirect causes,” the UNDP Resident Representative, Mohamed Yahya, said in a statement.

The statement gave the major highlights in the report entitled, ‘Assessing the Impact of Conflict on Development in North-east Nigeria’.

According to Mr Yahaya, the findings in the report showed that “for each casualty caused directly by insurgency, an additional nine people, primarily children, have lost their lives due to a lack of food and resources – and more than 90 per cent of conflict-attributable deaths are of children under the age of five”.

He said critical aspect of progress and development, including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality, education, water availability and sanitation, might not return to pre-conflict levels in the region even by 2030.

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