Cameroon deports 2,000 Nigerians in fight against Boko Haram: sources

Cameroon has deported more than
2,000 Nigerians who were living in
the country illegally as part of new
security measures intended to
prevent suicide attacks by Boko
Haram jihadists, sources said Friday.
Regional newspaper L’Oeil du Sahel
reported that about 2,500 Nigerians
had been “rounded up” in Kousseri,
in the far north of Cameroon, and
sent back to their country on
Thursday.
The weekly posted a photo on its
Facebook page showing several
departing trucks crammed with
hundreds of passengers.
A source close to regional authorities
confirmed that “more than 2,000
‘irregular’ Nigerians have been
expelled from Kousseri”.
Mey Aly, an official from a local NGO,
said that most of the Nigerians “had
fled the atrocities of Boko Haram” to
take refuge in Cameroon.
Thursday’s deportations came just a
day after Nigerian President
Muhammadu Buhari visited
Cameroon for talks on how to combat
the escalating regional threat from
Boko Haram.
Buhari and Cameroonian counterpart
Paul Biya pledged to strengthen
cooperation between their two
countries in the fight against the
insurgents.
Between July 12 and July 25,
Cameroon’s far north, on the border
with Boko Haram’s Nigerian
strongholds, suffered three suicide
attacks — two in the regional
capital, Maroua — leaving at least 44
people dead.
The Cameroonian border post at
Kousseri — which has been hit by
two suicide attacks since June —
occupies a strategic position, with
just a bridge separating it from
Chad’s capital N’Djamena.
Authorities in Cameroon’s far north
have taken significant steps to boost
security, including banning women
from wearing the full face-veil amid
fears that suicide bombers could use
the garment to conceal explosives.
“With these attacks, the tone of the
authorities has changed,” said a
security source in Maroua. “They
have asked that foreigners (notably
Nigerians) and displaced people in
the border areas go home.”
Some 300 Cameroonian children
were removed from their Koranic
schools in Maroua and taken back to
their villages on Friday, according to
a source close to local authorities, as
the schools’ managers feared that
insurgents could try to use them for
suicide attacks.
Boko Haram’s bloody insurgency in
Nigeria has left more than 15,000
people dead since 2009 and has
increasingly spread across the
country’s borders, with Chad and
Cameroon suffering deadly suicide
bombings in recent months.