Boko Haram clashes leave 20,000 dead in Nigeria’s Borno: report

PanARMENIAN.Net - About 20,000 people have been killed in the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria's Borno state, This Day said citing a report for the World Bank that puts the cost of destruction at $5.9 billion.

The report lays bare the extent of the damage since the insurgency began in 2009 and which, at one point, saw the Islamists control swathes of territory across the northeast.

It is part of a Post-Insurgency Recovery and Peace-building Assessment, an intervention program involving the World Bank, European Union and the UN with six northeastern states.

In Borno, sources with knowledge of the report said that some 20,000 citizens are thought to have been killed during the violence — a higher figure than previous estimates. In addition, the majority of the more than 2.0 million internally displaced persons came from the state, This Day says.

The report also estimated parks, game, forest and grazing reserves, orchards, river basins and lakes have been poisoned in 16 of the 27 areas, and 470,000 livestock killed or stolen.

The source close to the Borno state government said the report has yet to be approved by the bank and a decision was expected soon on funding.

But given the cost of the damage — about $5.9 billion — and Nigeria’s struggling economy caused by the global oil shock, matching external funding for reconstruction could be problematic, the source added. The World Bank in Nigeria declined to comment.