Repatriation of Nigerian refugees to start on Monday

Cameroon, Nigeria and the UN Refugee agency UNHCR have signed an agreement providing for the voluntary repatriation of 10,000 Nigerians who fled across the border to escape ethnic clashes three years ago. “We plan to start the voluntary repatriation of 10,000 out of an estimated 17,000 refugees on Monday 18 April,” Jacques Franquin, the UNHCR Representative in Cameroon told IRIN on Friday. The repatriation will take place over a period of eight months, with 1,250 refugees expected to be repatriated every month, Franquin said. Meanwhile, Cameroon faces a fresh influx of refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR). Franquin said he had just returned from the border area where 3,000 people from the Mbororo ethnic group had sought shelter following attacks on their villages by former combatants who helped bring President Francois Bozize to power in a 2003 coup. The gunmen had followed the refugees across the border causing further havoc in Cameroon, where 10,000 to 15,000 local people had also been displaced from their homes as a result of attacks and looting, he added. Reuters news agency quoted the governor of Cameroon's Adamawa province, Joseph Noutsa, as saying the government had sent extra troops to restore order in the border area, where the raiders from CAR had staged a spate of night-time attacks in and around the villages of Djohong and Ngaoui, 500 km northeast of Yaounde. Noutsa said the raiders were continuing to target cattle herders of the Mbororo ethnic group in Cameroon, kidnapping them and demanding a ransom, because of their perceived wealth. The return of the Nigerian refugees was announced at a ceremony in Yaounde on Thursday, where the Nigerian and Cameroonian governments signed an agreement with UNHCR for their repatriation. At least 23,000 Fulani cattle herdsmen fled from Nigeria into nearby Cameroon to escape clashes with farming communities on the Mambilla plateau in Taraba state between 1 and 7 January 2002. More than 100 people were killed in the fighting. Some of the Fulani refugees later returned to Nigeria, but the majority remained in Cameroon. Nigeria indicated last June it was willing to help these refugees come home. However, Franquin said the UNHCR had made sure that proper reception centres were established and that the mainly Christian farmers on the Mambilla plateau were properly informed of the return of the Muslim Fulani refugees, before it started to truck them back across the border. Franquin said a survey of refugees living in the Banyo and Donga-Mantung districts of western Cameroon, where most of the refugees had settled, had shown that 60 percent of them were willing to return home. Edwin Edobor, the Nigerian High Commissioner (ambassador) in Cameroon, welcomed the repatriation agreement with a huge smile. "Today is my happiest day since I took over the Nigerian diplomatic mission in Cameroon,…the signing of this accord now breaks the last barrier for the repatriation of 'my refugees',” he told reporters. "I will personally see to it that they go home safely and in the best conditions possible." “I thank the Cameroon government for their hospitality, and the population of Adamawa (province) for proving that they are their own brothers' keepers," the high commissioner said. The progressive departure of the Nigerian refugees will leave the UNHCR with about 30,000 urban refugees to look after in Cameroon. Most are concentrated in Yaounde, the administrative capital, and Douala, the country's main port and industrial centre. Most of these are from Chad, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire.