Red Cross launches appeal for 57,000 displaced

The Nigerian Red Cross has launched an appeal for relief assistance for more than 57,000 people displaced in recent communal conflicts across the country, officials said on Thursday. The president of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Emmanuel Ijewere, told IRIN that between 57,000-60,000 were displaced in violent communal conflicts that occurred in parts of northern Nigeria and the southern oil-producing Niger Delta. A breakdown of the figures showed that 40,000 people, victims of communal clashes, were still sheltering in schools and other public places in the northern state of Gombe. In northeastern Adamawa, some 11,000 people were yet to be re-settled after recent fighting between herders and farming communities. Another 6,000 people were displaced by clashes in February in the southern oil town of warri between the Itshekiri and the Urhobo ethnic groups. "We've been providing them with food and other assistance, but the rations are getting meagre," Ijewere said. He said there were also many of the displaced people who had injuries that only hospitals can cope with. Ijewere said though the Nigerian government was aware of the situation and the needs of the displaced people, its officials were yet to provide any assistance. This has prompted the request it sent out for international donor agencies to come to the aid of the thousands of displaced people. Thousands of people have died in a series of violent communal conflicts that have rocked Africa's most populous country of 120 million since President Olusegun Obasanjo's election in 1999. More than one million people have also been displaced. In the past two years alone more than 750,000 people were displaced by communal fighting in central Nigeria alone, according to figures announced by Vice President Atiku Abubakar in February.