A press statement issued by the World Health Organisation on Thursday noted that conflict, climate shocks, ongoing impacts of COVID-19 and rising costs of living are leaving an increasing number of children acutely malnourished while key health, nutrition and other life-saving services are becoming less accessible.

The statement read in part, “Currently, more than 30 million children in the 15 worst-affected countries suffer from wasting – or acute malnutrition – and eight million of these children are severely wasted, the deadliest form of undernutrition. This is a major threat to children’s lives and their long-term health and development, the impacts of which are felt by individuals, their communities, and their countries.

“In response, five UN agencies – the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Refugee Agency, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organisation are calling for accelerated progress on the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting.

It aims to prevent, detect and treat acute malnutrition among children in the worst-affected countries, which are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, the Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen.

“The Global Action Plan addresses the need for a multi-sectoral approach and highlights priority actions across maternal and child nutrition through the food, health, water and sanitation, and social protection systems.”

The UN agencies call for decisive and timely action to prevent the crisis from becoming a tragedy for the world’s most vulnerable children.

This situation is likely to deteriorate even further in 2023.

We must ensure availability, affordability, and accessibility of healthy diets for young children, girls, and pregnant and lactating women. We need urgent action now to save lives, and to tackle the root causes of acute malnutrition, working together across all sectors,” said the Director-General of FAO, Qu Dongyu.

The Director General of WHO, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said, “The global food crisis is also a health crisis, and a vicious cycle: malnutrition leads to disease, and disease leads to malnutrition.

“Urgent support is needed now in the hardest hit countries to protect children’s lives and health, including ensuring critical access to healthy foods and nutrition services, especially for women and children.”

Meanwhile, a medical doctor and policy analyst, Dr Julian Ojebo, said malnutrition in Nigeria can be associated with poverty, which may have long-lasting effects on children beginning before birth and continuing after birth.

“Economic power, which is the ability to pay for what an individual wants can provide individuals pass to resources to avoid or buffer exposure to health risks. When the child is appropriately fed, malnutrition will be reduced or completely eradicated,” he said.

Also, a Professor of Public Health at the University of Ilorin, Tanimola Akande, urged the government to harness the enormous resources in the country to reduce malnutrition in the country.

The election of Nigeria and other countries, on Monday, into different regional groups that constitute the ITU Council, was the highpoint of the Plenipotentiary Conference 2022, ongoing in Bucharest, the capital city of the Republic of Romania.

In a statement made available to The PUNCH, by the Director, Public Affairs, Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, Reuben Muoka, the ITU had re-elected Nigeria based on “the clear recognition of the critical role Nigeria is playing on the global telecom stage,” adding that Nigeria would serve on the council again from 2023-2026.

The statement read in part, “At the conference which started on September 26, 2022, and scheduled to end on October 14, 2022, member states at the event voted on the composition of the next ITU Council and the 12 representatives to serve on the Radio Regulations Board for the next four years. “Like Nigeria and the countries elected into the Council, Bogdan-Martin, as the first woman to lead ITU in its 157-year history, will begin her four-year term from January 2023, when Houlin Zhao would have completed his second final term of four years in office as ITU Secretary General.

“The 21st Plenipotentiary Conference of the council, also saw the election by member states and Doreen Bogdan-Martin of the United States of America, as the organisation’s next secretary-general.”

Muoka added that Nigeria had been grouped to serve in region D for Africa along side other African countries.

He said, “The seats in ITU Council are divided into five regions, A to E. Nigeria was elected into the ITU Council Region D for Africa, which has 13 seats. Other 12 countries elected alongside Nigeria are Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Uganda.

“Elections of member states also took place into the Region A for The Americas (nine seats); Region B for Western Europe (eight seats); Region C for Eastern Europe & Northern Asia (five seats); and Region E, for Asia and Australasia with 13 seats for Africa.”

Commenting on Nigeria’s re-election, the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, thanked the ITU member states for the confidence it had in Nigeria expressed by the re-elected into the ITU Council, adding that the country had been playing critical roles over the years.

He said, “The re-election of Nigeria as a member of ITU Council for the next four years, again points to the globally recognised leadership role Nigeria is playing in Africa and at the level of ITU council in the area of telecommunications policy formulation and technical regulations development to drive ITU’s mission and vision.”

The ITU was established to coordinate telecommunications operations and services throughout the world. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and Nigeria became a member on November 4, 1961.

The Nigerian delegation at the conference was led by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami. Other members of the delegation included Chairman, Board of Commissioners of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Adeolu Akande, and the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta.

The terrorists have attacked the village countless times within the past five months, according to a Chibok resident.

The attack, according to the villager, started around 6 o’clock pm and it got all the villagers deserting for safety in the nearby Sambisa forest where the terrorists camped.

“The attack started at 6:20 pm this evening (Tuesday). They came on their motorcycles and started to shoot randomly from all angles.

The villagers ran to the bush for safety but the bush is Sambisa forest and that is where the Boko Haram insurgents are living. That village has been attacked more than ten times this year alone,” Adamson, a handicapped from Chibok said

“There is no other village around there except the Sambisa forest and the people living there have never left their homes despite the attacks.According to what I was told by my source who is presently hiding in the bush, the terrorists shot one man dead in his car and then set the car ablaze with the dead body inside the vehicle. They also killed two others while also burning down several houses. But we cannot determine the level of damage or destruction now until in the morning when they are all back in their villages,” Adamson said.

The attack occurred almost the same time as the UN Secretary-General was visiting Borno State for an on-the-spot assessment of the level of damage done by the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno.

The UN Chief who visited Gubio camp immediately when he arrived in Maiduguri told Zulum that he was happy with the condition he met the IDPs and pledged to offer all necessary assistance to ensure the safe return of IDPs to their ancestral homes in line with the state government’s resettlement plan.

“I saw people that have suffered smiling and hoping for the best. I saw ex-terrorists trying to integrate into society and I discovered that here in Borno we will not solve the problem if we do not solve the root cause of the problems.

“But I see here in Borno a governor who is determined to establish confidence and trust between the population and government. When the population does not trust the government, they follow terrorists. When the population sees the government cannot do anything for them, they follow terrorists. But here I see a government that is not only thinking about impressing the population but thinking about the future.

“I see that what they really want is not food but the condition to really go back home in dignity and safety,” he said.

Guterres, in a statement on Friday by his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said the strike – and others against civilians and civilian infrastructure – were “gross violations” of international law.

The Secretary-General said the strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine, which killed and injured scores of civilians waiting to be evacuated, “including many women, children and elderly,” was “completely unacceptable.”

Guterres reminded all parties of their obligations under international law to protect civilians, and of the urgency to agree on humanitarian ceasefires in order to enable the safe evacuation of, and humanitarian access to, populations trapped in conflict.

He reiterated his appeal to all concerned to bring an immediate end to this brutal war.

Similarly, UN Crisis Coordinator for Ukraine, Amin Awad, said many had suffered terrible injuries at the railway station and that the number of fatalities was likely to rise.

“It was widely reported over the last two days that the station and surrounding area had been full of civilians attempting to flee intensifying hostilities.

We are extremely disturbed by the reports of children, women, the elderly and people with disabilities – the most vulnerable people in the Kramatorsk area – who were caught up in this attack,’’ Awad said in a statement.

Awad said the use of explosives, “with wide area impact in populated areas is a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

“All military forces, in all conflicts, must not carry out attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. They must do their utmost to protect civilians.”

He added that hospitals in the surrounding area were now full of casualties.

“We and our humanitarian partners are ready to do anything we can to help those who are responding to the attack and those who have survived. We have delivered first aid supplies as well as emergency food rations, water purification tablets and blankets. We continue to call on all the parties to this conflict to allow safe and unimpeded passage for people who wish to leave, to prevent attacks on essential transportation for civilians, and for life-saving relief supplies to reach those unable to move or evacuate.”

The UN Children’s Fund Ukraine Representative, Murat Sahin, said the train station had been the main route out for thousands of families evacuating from Donetsk region, “which has seen some of the war’s worst destruction,” to relatively safer areas in Ukraine.

“Earlier today, UNICEF offloaded medical kits and emergency supplies at Kramatorsk.

“Over the past week, UNICEF has delivered about 50 metric tons of life-saving supplies including medicines, water and hygiene kits to Kramatorsk to respond to rapidly deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the east.

“The UNICEF team was delivering life-saving supplies to the regional health department, a kilometre away from the train station when the attack took place,” he said.

In its biggest-ever single-country appeal, the UN said $4.4 billion (3.9 billion euros) was needed within Afghanistan, while a further $623 million was required to support the millions of Afghans sheltering beyond its borders.

The UN said 22 million people inside Afghanistan and a further 5.7 million displaced Afghans in five neighbouring countries needed vital relief this year.

“A full-blown humanitarian catastrophe looms. My message is urgent: don’t shut the door on the people of Afghanistan,” said UN aid chief Martin Griffiths.

“Help us scale up and stave off wide-spread hunger, disease, malnutrition and ultimately death.”

Since the Taliban hardline Islamist movement seized control of Afghanistan in mid-August, the country has plunged into financial chaos, with inflation and unemployment surging

Washington has frozen billions of dollars of the country’s assets, while aid supplies have been heavily disrupted.

Afghanistan also suffered its worst drought in decades in 2021.

Without the aid package, “there won’t be a future”, Griffiths told reporters in Geneva.

Griffiths said the appeal, if funded, would help aid agencies ramp up the delivery of food and agriculture support, health services, malnutrition treatment, emergency shelters, access to water and sanitation, protection and education.

An estimated 4.7 million people will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2022, including 1.1 million children with severe acute malnutrition.

The 309-page report stated, “The atrocious maiming and killing of unarmed, helpless and unresisting protesters while sitting on the floor and waving their Nigerian flags and while singing the National Anthem can be equated to a massacre in context.”

While indicting the soldiers and the police, the panel stated that it unravelled the fact that after the personnel of the Nigerian Army exited the scene, the Nigeria Police Force followed up with the killing of the protesters, shooting directly at those fleeing, who ran into shanties and the lagoon.

It recommended that all army officers, excluding Major General Omata, and men of the Nigerian Army deployed in the Lekki tollgate should be made to face appropriate disciplinary action, stripped of their ranks and dismissed as they were not fit and proper to serve in any public or security service of the nation.

Already, the United States, the United Nations, the United Kingdom and Amnesty International have called on the Nigerian government to ensure that the panel’s report is handled transparently even as the military and the Federal Government await the release of the White Paper.

The Nigerian military and its current use of arms are subject to the Leahy vetting, an American rights law that prohibits the United States government from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.

An arms embargo had earlier been placed on Nigeria, which prevented the country from effectively pursuing the war against terror during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

However, during the administration of former American President, Donald Trump, the embargo was lifted and the US began selling arms to Nigeria, including 12 Super Tucano aircraft.

The US, however, warned that the arms and the soldiers being trained would be subject to Leahy vetting, meaning that military assistance could be discontinued.

Earlier in the year, Reuters had reported that the United States Congress had initiated plans to impose an arms embargo on Nigeria.

In an email chat with The PUNCH on Wednesday, the Deputy Director for Advocacy and Government Relations for Amnesty International USA, Mr Adotei Akwei, said he had written to the US Congress to implement the Leahy laws against Nigeria.

Akwei welcomed the report of the panel, adding that it confirmed what Amnesty had always been saying about the #EndSARS protests.

He said, “While we welcome this report, we are also painfully aware that other investigations into abuses by the Nigerian security forces have also confirmed abuses, called for reform and accountability and have resulted in no action whatsoever. We will wait to see what the response is from the Buhari administration, but until then, we still call for robust implementation of the Leahy laws in regards to the Nigerian military.”

In an interview with The PUNCH, a former Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Prof Bola Akinterinwa, said Nigeria could face not just an arms embargo, but sanctions.

Akinterinwa stated, “It goes beyond an embargo. There are many ways foreign countries respond to situations like this. If you use the US as an example, I can assure you that all those suspected government officials will be sanctioned in different ways, either by visa bans, withdrawal of privileges, or initiating a trial for them abroad. Some months ago, some US congressmen said they should not supply the Tucano ordered by Nigeria and they should stop selling arms to Nigeria. In this kind of situation, the likelihood of further sale of arms to Nigeria is remote. They are currently considering that.”

A retired Nigerian diplomat, Ambassador Joe Keshi, who served in the US, Togo, Ethiopia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Namibia and Sierra Leone, said indeed, Nigeria risked another arms embargo with the damning report on the killing of the #EndSARS protesters.

Keshi stated that the Nigerian police needed urgent reforms, including learning how to handle protesters.

He said the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, goofed by calling on Nigerians not to disparage the military when he could have just promised to investigate the issues raised in the report.

The retired diplomat said the Federal Government should admit that mistakes were made and apologise rather than attempting to pick holes in the panel’s report.

“That is true (arms embargo). And that is why it is so sad the way the authorities are reacting to this report. There should be a simple admission that a mistake was made,” Keshi said.

FAO Communication Officer, David Tsokar, said this in a statement issued on Friday in Abuja.

According to Tsokar, the United Nations food security and nutrition analysis conducted in 20 states in October show that insecurity and COVID-19 have forced 12 million Nigerians into hunger.

He said that about 19 per cent of affected households are in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States because of the ongoing insecurity in the northeast and the lingering economic impact of COVID-19.

“The analysis, known as the Cadre Harmonise conducted in 20 states and the FCT revealed that approximately 12.1 million people are expected to face food scarcity through December,’’ Tsokar said.

He said that the provisional result of the report showed that the number of people in critical or worse phases of food insecurity might increase to about 16.9 million.

Tsokar said this would be the case unless efforts were made to scale up and sustain humanitarian aid.

The states analysed in the current Cadre Harmonise include Abia, Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross-River, Edo, and Enugu.

Others were Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Lagos, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and FCT.

He said that the analysis estimates showed that Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states were the most affected by the prolonged armed conflicts.

In these states, 2.4 million people are currently facing hunger and needed urgent assistance.

Tsokar said that an estimated two million people in the emergence phase even with humanitarian aid were facing extreme food deficits, resulting in a very high acute malnutrition or excessive mortality.

He said this number was projected to increase to 3.5 million at the peak of the 2022 lean season between June and August.

Tsokar said at this time, the number of people anticipated to be in the emergency phase
would double to 4.6 million.

He said another 13.6 million people were anticipated to experience catastrophe-like conditions in some of the most inaccessible localities.

Looming over the two-day talks in Rome is pressure to make headway on tackling global warming, ahead of the key COP26 summit kicking off in Glasgow Monday.

The stakes are high, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warning G20 leaders Friday to show “more ambition and more action” and overcome mistrust in order to advance climate goals.

“We are still on time to put things on track, and I think the G20 meeting is the opportunity to do that,” Guterres said.

Security was tight in Rome as US President Joe Biden arrived in the Italian capital anxious to turn a page from the tumultuous Trump years and show that American leadership on the world stage is restored.

Yet the Democrat faces a credibility test as his own signature climate policy — part of a sweeping economic package — is held up amid infighting within his party in Congress.

Absent from the G20 will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who plan to attend by video link.

Summit host Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, has called for a “G20 commitment on the need to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees” above pre-industrial levels, the most ambitious target outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — the host of the UN talks next week — gave a dire warning of what could happen if the world failed.

“We are not going to stop global warming in Rome or in this meeting in COP,” he told reporters aboard his plane to Rome. “The most we can hope to do is slow the increase.”

Humanity, Johnson warned, can regress “at extraordinary speed”.

“You saw that with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and I’m afraid to say that it’s true today unless we get this right in tackling climate change.”

Complicating the task for the G20 will be disparities between top world powers on tackling global warming.

China, the world’s biggest polluter and responsible for more than a quarter of all carbon emissions, has been accused of sidestepping calls to stop building new coal-fired power plants.

A new plan submitted by Beijing to the UN ahead of COP26 fell short of environmentalists’ expectations, with a target date of 2060 to reach carbon neutrality.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has steadfastly demanded that his country be paid for protecting its share of the Amazon.

The world’s biggest rainforest is seen as a vital resource to combat climate change for its ability to absorb fossil fuel emissions.

– Taxing global players –
A surer bet for concrete progress at the G20 involves taxation, as the group is expected to endorse the 15 per cent minimum international tax rate on multinational companies after nearly 140 countries reached an OECD-brokered deal.

The move seeks to end tax optimisation, in which global corporations — including big US tech firms like Apple and Google parent Alphabet — shelter profits in countries with low-tax systems.

The OECD says a 15 per cent global minimum corporate tax rate could add $150 billion annually to global tax revenues.

G20 finance ministers gave their backing to the tax overhaul in July.

Although no new pledges are expected on Covid-19 vaccines at the G20, a press release from a Friday meeting of G20 finance and health ministers stated that members would “take steps to help boost the supply of vaccines and essential medical products and inputs in developing countries and remove relevant supply and financing constraints.”

A security force of over 5,000 police and soldiers has been mobilised for the summit, according to the interior ministry, and several demonstrations are expected.

The summit is being held away from the city centre after violent clashes erupted earlier this month between protesters and police over the extension of Italy’s coronavirus pass to all workplaces.

This was contained in the Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishments; the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances; the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; Special Rapporteur on minority issues and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.

The UN said it received information on allegations of enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment of Nnamdi Kanu by Kenyan Security Officials, as well as his illegal rendition to Nigeria to face trial for terrorism-related charges, which were believed to be linked to his leadership of the Indigenous People of Biafra.

It added that since his rendition to Nigeria, Kanu had been denied family visits, confidential access to a lawyer and necessary medical treatment for his underlying illness.

The mandate read in part, “While we do not prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, we would like to express our concern in relation to the enforced disappearance of Nnamdi Kanu from June 19, 2021, until his reappearance at Nigerian Federal High Court in Abuja on June 29, 2021, and his reported illegal rendition from Nairobi to Abuja without judicial process.”

The UN further described the alleged torture and ill-treatment of Kanu as alarming, saying they constitute a violation of fundamental human rights.

It said, “We are further alarmed by the alleged torture and ill-treatment Mr Kanu has been subjected to during his detention by the DSS in Nigeria. If confirmed, these allegations would constitute prima facie violations of fundamental human rights, including the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of liberty and the absolute and non-derogable prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment under the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. The Committee against Torture and the UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly concluded that enforced disappearances may amount to torture and other forms of ill-treatment both with regard to the disappeared and with regard to their family members, due to the anguish and uncertainty concerning the date and whereabouts of loved ones.”

The UN further demanded an explanation of the initial steps taken by the Federal Government to safeguard the rights of Kanu in compliance with international instruments.

The mandate read, “As it is our responsibility under the mandates provided to us by the Human Rights Council to seek to clarify all cases brought to our attention, we would be grateful for your observations on the following matters: any additional information and any comment you may have on the above-mentioned allegations.

“Please provide detailed information on the current state of health of Mr Kanu and the measures undertaken, or foreseen, to prevent any irreparable damage to his life and personal integrity and to ensure that he has access to the medications and medical treatment required by his health conditions.

“Please provide detailed information on the circumstances in which Mr Kanu was arrested, forcibly disappeared before being handed over to Nigerian authorities and transferred from Nairobi to Abuja. Also provide any international arrest warrant that may have been issued against him, prior to his arrest.”

The UN also requested that detailed information on the factual and legal grounds of Kanu’s arrest and detention be provided, as well as formal charges against him and the legal provisions used to charge him.

It also asked that FG explain how Kanu’s arrest and detention were in conformity with the international human rights obligations of Nigeria.

According to a statement by President Buhari’s media aide, Femi Adesina, the UN secretary-general revealed this at a meeting with Buhari on Friday, September 24, at the 76th session of the United Nations general assembly (UNGA) taking place in New York.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres,  urged Buhari to leverage his leadership position to ensure stability among West African nations.

Adesina said. “According to the UN scribe, Africa, especially West Africa, was generally seen as an ocean of stability and good governance but was deeply concerned at a recent reversal of fortunes in democratic rule in some parts of the West African sub-region with coups overturning elected institutions. He, therefore, urged President Buhari to continue to show leadership as he looks up to Nigeria to help stabilise the sub-region in terms of democracy and good governance. On terrorism, the secretary-general commended the efforts of Nigeria on this global phenomenon, assuring the Nigerian leader of the United Nations’ continued support in her efforts to address the prevailing security and humanitarian challenges that have arisen, especially with the internally displaced persons. He also commended Nigeria’s efforts on climate change, expressing the willingness of the world body to cooperate with the country in this regard. President Buhari applauded Mr Gutterres for his global leadership and the success of the 76th session. He assured the secretary-general that Nigeria had achieved appreciable successes in tackling the insecurity caused by terrorists and bandits. The president also thanked him for the global organisation’s intervention in activities towards reducing the effects of climate change, especially with the support for the Great Green Wall programme, which is aimed at arresting desertification across the Sahel as well as the campaign against deforestation in Nigeria.”