Story highlights Weihe: The situation in northeastern Nigeria is what we in the humanitarian field call a forgotten crisis

Nigerians are following US presidential transition to see whether US will live up to its values as force for global good

Max Weihe is a deputy field director with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian relief organization with operations in 40 countries and 22 US cities. The opinions in this article belong to the author.

(CNN) There is no escaping US politics these days. Even in remote northeastern Nigeria, where I have just spent two months with the International Rescue Committee, most of the televisions are set to international news networks which are covering the presidential transition in excruciating detail.

At this point, Nigerians know as much about the political drama as the US audience does. And they are anxious about how Rex Tillerson will work with their government , starting January 20.

But there is virtually no coverage of the catastrophic events in their own backyard. After seven years of brutal violence by Boko Haram, 8.5 million people in northeastern Nigeria are in dire need of humanitarian aid, according to a United Nations analysis released last week

Even before the US election, the situation in northeastern Nigeria was what we in the humanitarian field call a forgotten crisis -- one that has been ignored by the news media, politicians, and donors. Now I worry it will become even more removed from the public consciousness over the next few months, forestalling the possibility of urgently needed action.

Women and children await treatment at a mobile health clinic in Maiduguri, Nigeria.

Ground zero is Nigeria's Borno State, which is 36,000 square miles in land mass -- or about the size of Indiana. The state's motto, emblazoned on every license plate, is "The Home of Peace." Sadly, this is no longer the case. For the last seven years, Borno has been beset by violence, economic collapse and infrastructural decay. Over 1.4 million people -- more than twice the population of Washington, DC -- have been uprooted from their homes and forced to squat in government-run camps, abandoned buildings and the homes of generous strangers.