The international donor conference on Boko Haram holding in Berlin have pledged two point five, two billion dollars to help countries in the Lake Chad Basin to fight Boko Haram.

The aid will be disbursed “in the coming years” to Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon, where the jihadist group launches frequent suicide bomb attacks from its bases in Lake Chad.

According to the conference, which is being attended by more than seventy states, international organisations and non-governmental organisations, raised six hundred and seventy-two million dollars last year.

United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and Head, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock, thanked donors for their generous donations.

Lowcock said the contribution at the Lake Chad Berlin conference would help deliver life-saving humanitarian assistance throughout the Lake Chad Basin, saying the support was crucial to ensuring life-saving assistance reaches all those in need.

The conference, which focused on humanitarian assistance, civilian protection, crisis prevention and stabilisation for the region, had sought to raise $1.56 billion while Lowcock had projected more than one billion dollars.

The donations and pledges by countries were as follows: Germany, the host country – 265 million Euros; and Norway – $125 million.

The others were U.S. – $420 million; Switzerland – $20 million; France – 131 million Euros; Belgium – 45 million Euros; Finland – 2.3 million Euros; and Denmark – $72.5 million.

UK also donated £146 million; Canada – CAD $68 million; the European Union – 231.5 million Euros; Luxembourg – 40 million Euros; and Spain – 3.2 million Euro.

Lowcock said a famine was averted in the region last year due largely to international aid, but added that millions of people in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon were still in dire need of help.

head of the UN Development Programme, Achim Steiner, warned that more people could flee the region unless the international community took action to help them for the long-term.

Ahead of the 2018 conference, about 10 non-governmental organisations active in the Lake Chad region had said 11 million people were in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

“The insurgency as well as military operations across the four countries have displaced 2.4 million people and left five million people food insecure while significantly reducing economic activity,” a statement signed by the NGOs said.

The conference will focus on humanitarian assistance, civilian protection, crisis prevention and stabilisation of the region, as well as seek to raise funds for humanitarian requirements totalling $1.56 billion.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Tijjani Bande, shortly before the conference, had appealed to all stakeholders to redouble their commitments to the Lake Chad Basin crisis.

Bande said the Berlin Conference on the Lake Chad has been slated for the first week of September 2018 and would build substantially on the outcome of the February 2017 Oslo Donors Conference on the Lake Chad.