The Federal Government has announced its plans to repatriate 20,000 Nigerians from Chad and Cameroon.
It said 6,000 people would be brought back from Chad while 14,000 others would be conveyed from Cameroon in the next two months.
As of December 31, last year, 21,381 Nigerian refugees were in Chad and 120,677 others in Cameroon.
Last year, the Federal Government repatriated 5,000 willing Nigerian refugees from Cameroon to Banki in Borno State.
It was learnt that the Federal Government bought food and non-food items worth N2 billion as return package for the refugees last year.
The Federal Commissioner of the National Commission for Refugee, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI), Tijani Ahmed, announced this yesterday in Abuja at a Technical Working Group (TWG) meeting on the voluntary repatriation of Nigerian refugees.
Ahmed said: “In the Year 2023, the commission spearheaded the repatriation of 5,000 people living in Cameroon to the country.
“We are also arranging to bring back those who are interested in returning because repatriation is voluntary. An agreement has been signed between UNHCR, the Government of Cameroon, and the Federal Government of Nigeria in the area of repatriation of our people from Cameroon.
“We are going to work towards the repatriation of 6,000 Nigerians out of about 21,000 of them in Chad.
“We are looking at returning 3,000 households from Chad, which is about 6,000 people who would be repatriated from Chad to Nigeria. For Cameroon, we have about 14,000 people, but we will profile them because we don’t have to force anybody to return. Arrangements are underway to get them back. Within the next two months, we should have concluded the arrangement on repatriation.”
