|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The recent crisis in Cameroon has caused huge influx of fleeing populations into Cross River State, therefore compounding the problem of Bakassi refugees. This is said to have drained the resources of the state government.
There are over 1,000 Bakassi refugees already causing nightmares in Cross River State, according to the secretary to the state government (SSG), Tina Banguo Agbo, who spoke with newsmen at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa.
The Cross Rivers government was now at crossroads in the crossfire of crises from both the Bakassi crisis and the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, with the fleeing populations finding Cross River as a landing pad.
The state government and people could not have minded, but considering the economic hardship in the country and near-zero allocation from the Federal Government.
According to Agbo, all the oil wells in Cross River had gone to other states, thus making the state almost a non-oil state, and now being compounded by refugees from two major crises.
She said the state was trying to build over 500 flats to relocate them from the refugee camp, but the new influx from Cameroon had put Cross River on a high jump economically.
Cross River, she said further, was seriously in problem because apart from the problems of the Bakassi returnees, and the new ones from the Anglophone crisis, the state also had to contend with all the militants that were driven from Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa states.
The Federal Government, she said, recently sent relief materials to the IDPs in the state, but pointed out that the relief materials were just a tip of the iceburg.
“We need much more than that because the refugees problem is causing us millions of naira,” she said.
Due to lack of job opportunities and to create a future for most refugees, the SSG noted that the state governor had to expand his appointments to over 1,000 persons with monthly salaries just to put food on the table.
