LAGOS, Nigeria
Nigeria's relief agency said Wednesday that it had received another 650 people who had returned to the country after having fled to neighboring Cameroon at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency, bringing the total number of such returnees to over 9,000.
“We received another 650 displaced persons from Cameroon yesterday,” Saad Bello, coordinator for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency in the northeastern town of Yola, told Anadolu Agency.
“In total, we now have over 9,000 [Nigerians returning] from Cameroon who are being sheltered here,” he said.
He added that some 60 percent of the displaced persons at the camps in Yola were women and children.
In recent years, thousands of Nigerians fleeing Boko Haram violence had sought refuge in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Now, however, with the militant group on the run before an ongoing army campaign, many refugees are returning home.
According to Bello, the camps in Yola – the regional capital of Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa State – are only hosting returnees from Cameroon.
"We don’t have any displaced persons coming from Chad or Niger here,” he said.
In a related development, the Nigerian army on Wednesday released 128 people who had been suspected of belonging to Boko Haram, including several Chadian and Cameroonian nationals.
