Even with a white handkerchief, Governor Benedict Ayade of Cross River State struggled to hide his tears when he spoke on the heart-rending plight of the Bakassi returnees.
This situation was occasioned by the ceding of Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon about four years ago. The resultant anguish and plight of the displaced Bakassi people has become a global concern even as it is equally a national shame.
With emotion, the governor said that Cross River people were still very angry with the federal government and United Nations for conniving to cede the mineral-rich territory without their consent.
The occasion and time were apt for the governor to display such bottled-up emotion. And the message was well sent. It happened when he received the Country Representative of United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Mrs. Angele Dikongue Atangana and her delegation in his office in Calabar last week.
Ayade said no amount of dollars can assuage their feelings over the Bakassi issue, adding: “UN and federal government connived to unjustly deprive us of our ancestral home and turned us into refugees in our own land.”
The governor, who is a former senator, emphasised that the ceding of the Peninsula was done without a plebiscite, thereby subjecting his people to such untold anguish.
However, he praised the concern shown by the UN, saying: “Your Commission is undertaking a worthy and noble cause. I thank you for your humanitarian assistance and expression of emotion, but the people are angry in the way and manner they have been treated. They have been deprived of their heritage and livelihoods.”
He added that: “The people of Bakassi were not given the opportunity to choose where they would want to belong and I am telling the United Nations that this is an unsettled issue and no amount of dollars can settle the issue. The people have now been split between Cross River and Akwa Ibom as well as Nigeria and Cameroon. As the agony of the people continues, their plight cannot be wiped away by dollars.”
Ayade noted that: “Take it that we feel very disturbed and unhappy and if this had happened in any other part of the world, there would have been war today. This is totally unacceptable and is not done in the modern society. Today, Cross River is traversed by internally displaced persons, who are refugees in their own state. This is very uncharitable.
The governor stressed that: “The displaced people of Bakassi are suffering and if United Nations had anything in mind, it should have started from there and if anything needed to be treated as an emergency, it is Bakassi because the people live in such sub-human conditions. The state will work hard to strengthen things and we will partner the Commission to achieve its aims.”
Atangana commended the Cross River State government for accommodating refugees from Cameroon, saying that the Commission was touched by the plight of the displaced people of Bakassi.
Assuaging the governor’s fears, she said that everything would be done to resettle the displaced, including Cameroonians in their country of origin.
Atangana explained that the Commission spent about $200,000 in the first half of 2013, adding that it would introduce vocational training for the people with the assistance of other international development agencies.
But regular visits to the two camps of the Bakassi returnees, St Mark’s Primary School and Government Secondary School in Akwa Ikot Eyo Edem, in Akpabuyo local government area, left so much to be desired.
Children, pregnant women and the aged were seen writhing in pains, hunger and ailments.
Mrs. Affiong Asuquo Nyong, 57, rolled from one end of the mattress to the other just to ensure that the piece of old textile material she wrapped around her lean waist and parts of her breasts was not exposed.
Seventy-two-year-old Madam Comfort Ekpenyong, like Mrs. Asuquo, is a Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) patient who returned from the Ogoja General Hospital in Cross River State.
They said the uncontrollable leakage of urine was still their lot, yet they were discharged even though the state ministry of social welfare was said to be responsible for their treatment expenses at the hospital.
Ekpenyong stated that: “Since we were discharged few months ago, we have had no medical attention. Before you came, I had to trek to a local drug store to be attended to. There has been no medical attention to us, the Bakassi returnees over one year now. We hardly see the only nurse attached to us. Even then, where would she have the drugs to attend to us?”
When our reporter arrived at the two camps, many of the returnees had gone out to the bushes and neighbouring communities for menial tasks or hired jobs of weeding farms or fetching firewood for in order to survive.
Most people in the camps come from a village called Efut Obot Ikot in the then Bakassi that was ravaged and sacked by Cameroonian military in 2003.
The general and very loud complaints by the Bakassi returnees in these two camps are that they have been abandoned by the government.
Mrs. Emilia Okokon, who spoke Efik anguage lamented that: “Hunger and diseases are our major challenges. Since they promised us a monthly stipend, we have not seen anything. There are no more foodstuffs coming into the camps for over nine months now.”
The middle-aged woman added that: “We survive by going out to do weeding jobs or are hired cheaply to do farm or domestic works. Like me, some teachers in this school hire me to work on their farms but since they, too, have not been paid by the state government, how can they pay us. It is very difficult.”
Mrs. Ubong Etim Okon spoke similarly, pleading with the authorities to send them drugs and increase the number of nurses from one to three.
One of the camp officials, Mr. Okon Etim Effiom, said: “It is good that you are here to see things for yourself. Many journalists have visited us and written much about our plight but the authorities no longer pay attention to us.”
He stressed that: “We are people who are well-to-do and do not depend on hand-outs. We were comfortable fishermen and farmers but look at us here today, living a beggarly life, borrowing from just anybody, being hired for N100 menial tasks, just so we can see the next day. They have taken us for animals.”
Effiom stated that: “There was a time they said something about giving each of us N5, 000 conditional cash award, but none of us ever received it. It was only foodstuffs they used to send but they have since stopped. The state Emergency Management Agency which was responsible has not bothered to give us any explanation.”
He said from their records, there are 964 households in the two camps, with a total of 3,864 people, including women and children in the two camps.
At St Mark’s Primary School, where over 450 inmates are said to be camping, the returnees are occupying one block of seven large classrooms without windows.
The block is dilapidated. The roof leaks and the inmates use buckets and other utensils to collect rain water, are exposed to inclement elements.
There are different sizes of mattresses donated by the state government, individuals and the UN. There are also some mosquito nets.
But the fact that over 100 people are said to squat in each classroom is not amusing. Over crowdedness may not be the exact word to describe these camps. The sheer condition has made it utterly incondusive for human habitation.
The state of each classroom and the numerous inhabitants give room for very easy transfer of infectious ailments which is rampant in both camps.
At least 60 babies are said to have been delivered through traditional birth attendants in the camps in the last three years.