2,000 more Liberian refugees to return from Nigeria

Nigeria will shortly resume the repatriation of Liberian refugees with the return of some 2,000 people who fled their home country more than 15 years ago as civil war broke out. A transport operation was agreed by Nigerian and Liberian refugee officials with the backing of the UN refugee agency UNHCR and was signed by all parties in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday. A total of 903 refugees left Nigeria under a UNHCR-supervised repatriation programme last year, said Moremi Soyinka-Onijala, a Nigerian presidential aide. The new agreement covers a further 2,009 people, leaving behind just 651 of the 3,563 Liberian refugees in Nigeria who signed up to go home, he said. An estimated 350,000 refugees fled to other West African countries during Liberia's civil war which raged from 1989 to 2003. The UNHCR operation to repatriate them is moving at a snail's pace. By mid-June, UNHCR said it has assisted the repatriation of just 21,000 refugees, mostly from neighbouring Sierra Leone and Guinea. However, the United Nations reckons that a further 100,000 people have returned home spontaneously. Although some of the refugees leaving Nigeria will be home in time for Liberia's presidential elections on 11 October, they will not be allowed to vote. Refugees had to be home by 4 June to register for a ballot paper. Nigeria is still home to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was granted political asylum there to facilitate an August 2003 peace deal which brought the war to an end. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo is coming under increasing international pressure to turn Taylor over to stand trial at Sierra Leone's Special Court for supporting the country's Revolutionary United Front rebel movement and supplying it with weapons in exchange for smuggled Sierra Leonean diamonds.