More than 1,500 indigenes of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states where emergency rule was declared on May 14 by President Goodluck Jonathan are taking refuge in the northern part of Cameroon.
This was disclosed by the Nigerian Ambassador to Cameroon, Ambassador Hadiza Mustapha.
He said the figure had already been confirmed by the UN Refugee Commission and the Cameroonian authorities.
Mustapha spoke ahead of the first ever summit of Heads of States and Governments of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Gulf of Guinea Commission (GGC), with a focus on maritime safety and security in the Gulf of Guinea.
According to the envoy, the cooperation between both countries’ security agencies has checked the activities of Boko Haram terrorists and that the Cameroonian government had granted the refugees unlimited stay until the situation normalises in their states back home.
“There is a saying that you cannot choose your neighbours but you share both the good and the bad with your neighbours. As long as you cannot choose your neighbour, you can choose how you live with your neighbour, that is why peace is very important. And since I have been here 10 months and since we put the Bakassi issue behind us, there has been a lot of improvement in our relationship. And with that improvement and with that peace, a lot of cooperation is now possible.
“In the area of terrorism, there is a lot of cooperation between our security agencies and that of the Cameroonian security agencies in terms of exchange of information even in joint operations. They have also given us quite a lot of support, sometimes we have even had exchange of suspected persons. Like you rightly noted, this is all possible because of the peace that now exist between us. A lot of things is possible because both countries security agencies are co-operating very well.
“In fact, they have exchanged quite a lot of visits and meetings, we have to firm up the cooperation some more by going beyond just Nigeria and Cameroon and making it multilateral because as you know, there is also Chad Republic. There is a border between Nigeria and Chad and between Cameroon and Chad.
She also said they are four million Nigerians living in Cameroon, describing them as “very well behaved, hardworking, law abiding and holding the economy of Cameroon together in critical areas”.
