Cameroon has 4,000 refugees from Nigeria, official says

Cameroon has received 4,000 refugees from crisis-hit Nigeria, bringing the total Nigerian refugee count in neighboring states to 10,000 people, an official says.

The refugees were fleeing a Nigerian military offensive in the northern region of the country, said Cameroon’s Far-North region governor Fonka Awa on Wednesday.

“There are 4,000 refugees who have come in from Nigeria and we are working out a program with the International Red Cross (ICRC) to set up a refugee camp for them near the town of Mokolo,” Awa stated.

In June, the ICRC registered 6,000 refugees fleeing from Nigeria into neighboring Niger.

Experts blame the Boko Haram militant group for the ongoing violence in Nigeria.

On May 14, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan imposed a state of emergency in the states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, compelling thousands of farmers to flee their land with potential of a food crisis.

Since mid-May, the Nigerian military has launched numerous airstrikes on Boko Haram training camps in the northeast of the country, forcing the fighters to leave the camps.

However, the refugees now say that the fighters have regrouped in the mountains and rocky hills in the districts of Gwoza and Bama.

Over the past four years, violence in northern Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has claimed the lives of 3,600 people.