About 218,000 Nigerian refugees are living in three neighbouring
countries – Cameroon, Chad and the Niger Republic – the United Nations
Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has said.
The UNHCR Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Antonio Canhandula,
disclosed this on Wednesday, in Abuja, during a consultative meeting
on the global compact of refugees in Nigeria.
He also said about 22,408 Nigerian refugees had returned to their
various regions as of January to October 2019.
The official said the refugees are those displaced by violence in
states in the North-east, ”not those from in the North-west region
which the agency does not have adequate figures on”.
PREMIUM TIMES in September had reported that the UNHCR announced that
the number of refugees in the North-west seeking safety in the
neighbouring Niger Republic alone doubled to over 40,000 persons over
the last ten months.
The humanitarian group also said it was working with authorities in
Niger Republic to provide basic assistance and register the new
arrivals.
”Violence by armed groups in North-western Nigeria led to a new
humanitarian emergency in Niger’s border regions with Nigeria, many of
them women and children moving to more than 50 villages in Guidan
Roumji, Guidan Sori and Tibiri of the Niger Republic.
”The Nigerian population that has been displaced out of Nigeria over
the years. There are Nigerian refugees in Cameroon which are 94,000,
Chad, 12,000 refugees while Niger, it is 112,000 refugees.”
The UN envoy also said there was a problem of Nigerian refugees in
Cameroon ”being forced to unsafe areas”.
”The issue of Cameroon moving Nigerian refugees to unsafe areas in
Cameroon is old history,” he said. ”The situation was more in 2017,
less in 2018 and in 2019, we cannot say there have been forceful
(ejection) of any Nigerian refugees so the situation has tremendously
improved,” he said.
Tripartite agreement
He said the UNHCR has a tripartite agreement with the governments of
Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Niger Republic ”which lays out the
conditions under which repatriation should take place meaning a
condition of voluntariness and safety and similar other conditions.
”The tripartite agreement was signed in March 2017 for principled
return of Nigerian refugees from Cameroon. Expected to be
operationalised in 2019. The Agreement with Niger may be initiated in
2019.”
Mr Canhandula also said the UNHRC has registered about 46,000 refugees
from the Anglophone Cameroonian region that are living in Benue,
Taraba, Cross Rivers, and Akwa Ibom states.
He added that 37,117 refugees were ‘biometrically’ verified in the
four states, ”with Cross River hosting the highest number of 34,000
Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria”.
