Government unprepared for returnee influx

The Nigerian government has announced it is unprepared for the tens of thousands of returnees who have fled the southern Bakassi province over the past month, and is calling on the UN to help it handle the unexpected return. Up to 76,000 returnees have registered at 12 sites in Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, according to Victor Antai, council chairman of Mbo, one of the sites in Akwa Ibom. “We never envisaged such a flow of returnees,” Florence Ita-Giwa, head of the presidential task force on the resettlement and rehabilitation of Nigerian returnees, told IRIN. “It is because the situation in Bakassi [now under Cameroonian control] after the [14 August] handover has not been conducive, so they had to flee back to Nigeria. We had thought many of them would have stayed for at least a few more years.”

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