By Vining Ogu and Ben Ezeamalu
DIKWA, Nigeria (Reuters) -Destitute families displaced by conflict in northeastern Nigeria are finding nutrition centres closed or running low on food as a result of a collapse in aid funding from the United States and other Western countries.
Africa's most populous nation has 31 million people facing food shortages, more than any other country, according to the U.N. The worst crisis is in the northeast, where 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes and farmlands
during 15 years of war between Islamist insurgents and the army.
Hadiza Ibrahim has been displaced for 10 years. She and her husband and their eight children are sheltering at a camp in Dikwa, in Borno State, the centre of the conflict. They rely on a local nutrition centre where supplies are dwindling.
"I may not be able to eat tomorrow," said Ibrahim as she lined up at the site to receive meagre rations.
Ali Abani, who oversees security at the site, said many beneficiaries who had received food for over a decade came this month and found there was nothing left for them.
Until this year, the United States was providing 60% of funding for humanitarian operations in Nigeria. That came to an abrupt halt when President Donald Trump froze aid in January, saying other countries should step up.
But Britain, France and Germany, also important donors, have instead cut their own aid budgets and others have also announced cuts.
The results on the ground in Nigeria have been devastating. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has closed 150 nutrition centres in the northeast during the lean season between harvests, which runs from June to November, while other aid agencies have shut altogether.
"It meant that hundreds of thousands of children stopped receiving essential treatment, and the number of children who needed hospitalisation skyrocketed," said Chi Lael, the WFP spokesperson in Nigeria.
TURNING AWAY MALNOURISHED CHILDREN
At the Dikwa site, run by multiple agencies, Reuters reporters saw mothers and emaciated children lying on mats on the floor of a health centre because its 15 beds were occupied.
A health worker was feeding one of the children a packet of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a highly nutritious paste typically made from peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil, vitamins and minerals. But stocks were too low to treat all the children being brought to the centre.
"We're turning away patients," said Bukar Tijjani, a doctor with humanitarian group InterSOS.
The aid group Save the Children last week estimated that 3.5 million children across Nigeria required treatment for severe acute malnutrition, but said only 64% of the 629,000 cartons of RUTF needed to get through the lean season had been secured.
The WFP said the severity of the crisis facing children was unprecedented. Acutely malnourished children are far more likely to die from common infections than well-nourished children.
"We know that 600,000 children are at risk of mortality -- a figure we've never experienced before," said Lael.
The U.S. embassy in Nigeria said on Wednesday the U.S. government would contribute $32.5 million to the WFP to provide food assistance and nutrition support to internally displaced people in conflict-affected areas.
It did not say what had prompted the decision to provide the funds, a fraction of U.S. contributions in previous years and of the overall amounts required.
The WFP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.N. had initially budgeted $910 million to cover Nigeria's humanitarian needs this year but, following the suspension of U.S. aid, the figure was revised down to around $300 million as there was no realistic prospect of other donors making up for the shortfall.
Only about half of the lower figure had been raised by August, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
(Writing by Ben Ezeamalu; Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri; Editing by Estelle Shirbon, Alexandra Hudson and Kevin Liffey)
