OVER 40,00 NIGERIAN REFUGEES IN NIGER REPUBLIC.

Nigeria's army offensive against Islamist militants has pushed nearly 40,000 refugees over its northern border into Niger, a U.N. agency said, in a drive that is straining food supplies in the drought-prone country. The United Nations estimated in June there were 6,000 refugees from Nigeria but the figure has soared as President Goodluck Jonathan has stepped up attacks on Boko Haram militants. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest monthly report that of a total 37,332 refugees, nearly 29,000 are officially Niger nationals and the rest are Nigerian. "These figures, three times above the level the humanitarian workers were planning for, give an indication of the difficulties of developing a humanitarian response," it said. Boko Haram is seen as the biggest risk to stability in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and top oil producer, which shares a 1,500 kilometer border with its landlocked northern neighbor Niger along the edge of the Sahara Desert.