The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, has denied incidences of “severe acute malnutrition” at Internally Displaced Persons, IDP, camps in the Northeast, as alleged by an International Humanitarian Non-Governmental Organsation, Medecin San Frontiers, MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders.

In a press statement issued on Wednesday, the MSF had warned of grave “humanitarian crisis” in the camps as a result of acute malnutrition, which effect, it said, could be worse than the Boko Haram insurgency.

But Mohammed Kanar, Coordinator of NEMA in the Northeast, on Thursday denied the claims.

He said:  “As far as we are concerned we have no such cases of malnutrition as claimed. It is even shocking to mention that in Maiduguri where we have stable situation that there are such cases.

“All we know is that the federal government is doing its best in the state. MSF is not the only NGO that is working with us here, both in Maiduguri and outside. I wonder why they have a different opinion on this matter.

“We know that the state and the federal government are doing their best to address the needs of the IDPs.  The federal government has taken over the coordination of all relief assistance and related activities to make sure that things are done as rightly as possible.

The NEMA coordinator accused the MSF of running “their own campaign in this format to get donors attention to generate more money for them.”

“But as far as NEMA and the federal government is concerned we have been improving; as you can see now we have graduated from central feeding system to grand ratio distribution; from ratio distribution to household feeding.

Kanar stated that with the reconstruction of Bama and other liberated communities, which was recently kicked off by Governor Kashim Shettima, NEMA’s attention will gradually be focusing on returning people to their communities.

He there was nothing in Borno state to lend credence to “such grim situation that the MSF so painted.”