The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has delivered an advanced cardiac and trauma life-support ambulance in Cross River State, Nigeria, to support refugees from Cameroon in the state.

It also donated one pick-up vehicle to the state government to enhance the security of the host community and refugees in the Ogoja local government area of the state. 200 vaccine carrier boxes were also donated to complement the initial 50 distributed directly to primary health care centres in the southern Nigerian state.

The Head of the UNHCR sub-office in Ogoja, Tesfaye Bekele, presented the vehicles to Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River in Calabar, the state capital. He explained that the donation was part of UNHCR’s way of showing gratitude to the state government for the hospitality granted to the Cameroonian refugees since they started entering the state for safety.

‘The UNHCR is implementing community projects through non-governmental organisation partners to strengthen basic services such as health, water, sanitation and education to benefit both refugees and host communities,’ Bekele said.

There are over 85,000 Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria at the moment, and Cross River is hosting over 50,000 refugees, majorly in eight local government areas in the state. Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions have been rocked by violence after separatists declared the independence of ‘Ambazonia’.

The fighting between government security forces and armed groups, which has lingered since 2016, started when lawyers and teachers took to the streets of Buea and Bamenda to protest the domination of French in Anglophone courts and schools. The violence has caused about 6,000 deaths and a major humanitarian crisis, with almost 600,000 people internally displaced within the Anglophone and neighbouring regions, and over 77,000 forced to become refugees in Nigeria.

Source: UNHCR