Southern Cameroun refugees living in Nigeria have appealed to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for support in order to live a dignified life.
The appeal was made by Silas Amoh, one of the coordinators of the Cameroonian refugees recently in Lagos.
According to him, there are about 62,000 Southern Cameroonian refugees scattered across the south, east and north central Nigeria.
Silas, a trained banker was an Assistant Branch Manager with a multinational company, Afrigas in Cameroun before the political upheaval that forced him and others into Nigeria as refugees.
“We don’t like the situation that brought us to Nigeria as refugees. Nobody wants to be a refugee, a lot of us are responsible people and professionals contributing our quotas to the development of our country before the unfortunate situation in Southern Cameroun,” he lamented.
Silas however thanked the Nigerian government especially the Cross River State government which has provided tremendous support. “The Cross River State government has been of great help to us. They have what they call food bank through which they support us with food and we are grateful,” he said.
Relaying the situation that escalated the crisis back home, Silas painted the picture of a cultural incompatibility between the ruling government and people of the Southern Cameroun otherwise called Ambazonia.
“The government is northern dominated and they are Francophone while we in the south are Anglophone, they are trying to enforce their culture on us which we are not used to and our reacting against the domination is what they don’t like. That is the genesis of the crisis,” he explained.
“The reform we want was a creation of a Common Law Department in the Supreme Court of Cameroun. Our lawyers want a Law School that will teach those studying Common Law so they can be called to Bar. The government appointed people with Civil Law background to come and head the Common Law Department in Southern Cameroun and when they came they said all submissions will be done in French.
“This means our mothers who don’t even speak good English will be judged in the French language which they don’t understand. That was why our lawyers protested on the 11th of October 2016 by staying at home, boycotting the court. They wanted the government to review the law and after two weeks the teachers and the civil society joined. Many people were killed during the protests,” he explained.
On whether the Southern Cameroun can sustain itself as a country, Silas recalled that some elements were already castigating the struggle for independence claiming that the Southern Cameroun population cannot make a country.
“The population of Southern Cameroun is estimated at about 8million and some people have been saying we are not enough to form a country when Seychelles is below 100,000, when the likes of Iceland, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe also have low populations.
Still appealing to the Nigerian government, the refugees numbering about 62,000 in the country are pleading for a better living condition. The refugees also want ECOWAS and international community to recognise their plight and also recognise Ambazonia as a nation.
“We are about 62,000 in Nigeria and the bulk of this are in Cross River State. We also have people in Taraba, Benue, Akwa Ibom, Nassarawa and Enugu States. We have about 30 persons in Lagos and about 30 too in Abuja. We must confess, Nigeria has been of tremendous help and a big brother.
“I am in charge of Social Services in the camps, we take record of the births, though not accurate because some refugees are not that empowered, no network for their phones where they are, so we may not be able to capture all the information.
“The truth is that we have language advantage since we are Anglophone like our Nigerian hosts, so that is a big help for us as we are able to communicate. We depend more on the NGOs, the faith based organisations but the intervention is still low.
“A lot of us are not empowered, for instance in my own case I studied banking and finance in the university but now living as a refugee when I used to work to earn a living,” he lamented.
According to Silas, the major source of concern is the children who are not in school and the need to cater for teenage mothers and pregnant women in the various camps.
“Our major concern now is the fact that there are no schools for the children. Back home they were in school but since the crisis that claimed several lives, a lot of people are displaced, schools are shut down and we are here as refugees. Children are not in school any longer and if we have to go back today these children are becoming illiterates which is not good for the struggle,” he said.
Continuing, he said the challenge of having young girls as mothers because of the situation is pathetic. “In a camp of about 500 persons or thereabout, we are recording over 50 pregnant teenage girls and several other nursing mothers most of who are equally young, this is a crisis in our hands,” he cried.
Of worry is taking care of the women particularly and counseling the young boys who are to form the working generation.
“We all know women are delicate in nature and must be taken care of specially. We mostly don’t have the supply of sanitary towels for these women during their monthly cycle and you know it is not hygienic. There could be future complications and health challenges which would be an added problem.”
He therefore appealed to well-meaning Nigerians and ECOWAS in particular to help the Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria to live well.
He also called on international communities to wade into the crisis in Southern Cameroun and stop the daily killings which have kept people on the run for years.
