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Families
from Gwoza, Borno State, displaced by the violence and unrest caused by the
insurgency, are pictured at a refugee camp in Mararaba Madagali, Adamawa State,
February 18, 2014. Reuters/Stringer
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About 12,000
Nigerians are being repatriated over the next three to four days after seeking
refuge in Cameroon from attacks by Islamist militant group Boko Haram,
Nigeria's state emergency agency said on Wednesday. A
National Emergency Management Agency spokesman said the returnees would be accommodated
mainly in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, close to the border. "We
already cleared about 1,150 people but border officers projected that 12,000
people would be arriving," spokesman Manzo Ezekiel said.
Cameroonian
authorities expelled about 2,800 Nigerians over the weekend following a series
of suicide bomb attacks in July.
Reuters report continues:
The
six-year-old insurgency waged by Boko Haram to establish an Islamist state in
the northeast of Nigeria has displaced around 1.5 million people internally and
forced thousands to flee into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
A
multi-national joint taskforce combining 8,700 troops from Nigeria and its
neighbours is being set up in Chad's capital N'Djamena to combat the militants.
A
similar-sized repatriation occurred in May from the Lake Chad islands in Niger
when Nigerien authorities told residents, many of them Nigerians, to evacuate
before military operations.
About
25,000 people were forced to leave, sometimes brutally. Some died en route due
to inadequate evacuation assistance.
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