(Bloomberg) -- The Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday that it needs $232 million to help feed at least three million people in four countries facing food shortages because of the Islamist insurgency of Boko Haram militants in the Lake Chad area.
The UN agency plans to scale up its intervention immediately with 2.5 million people in Nigeria requiring $191 million of the amount, with the rest to be spent on 200,000 people in Cameroon, 155,000 people in Niger and 120,000 people in Chad, its Director-General Jose da Silva told reporters in Nigeria's northeastern city of Maiduguri.
Boko Haram is in the eight-year of its insurgency to impose its version of Islamic law on Africa's most populous country of more than 180 million that has led to the death of tens of thousands of people. Nigeria is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.
Da Silva arrived in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram, from a visit to Ndjamena, the capital of Chad.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Olukayode in Maiduguri at molugbode1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dulue Mbachu at dmbachu@bloomberg.net.
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