17 000 refugees to return home
2005-01-18 20:14
Lagos - Nigeria has set up camps ready to receive 17 000 of their own refugees from neighbouring Cameroon in the next few weeks, said a statement from the federal emergency management agency on Monday.
Thousands of Nigerians, mainly nomadic Fulani herdsmen and members of the Mambila ethnic group, fled the Mambila Plateau region in the southeast of the country and crossed the border in 2001 after an ethnic conflict erupted.
The statement said state and federal authorities, working with the United Nations refugee agency, had set up four reception centres to allow the displaced communities to return to Nigeria by the first week in February.
"The centres have been provided with social amenities such as toilets, bathrooms, meeting halls, electricity and water.
"All houses earlier abandoned by the refugees have been secured, while houses have been provided for those whose houses were destroyed, pending the reconstruction effort of the returnees."
The national emergency management agency would help in the reconstruction.
Tens of thousands of Nigerians have been killed in ethnic and religious unrest since the end of military rule in 1999 and hundreds of thousands displaced, most of them within the country.