NIGERIA-POPULATION: Liberian Refugees Suffer and Wait

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

ORU, Nigeria, Sep 18 1996 (IPS) - When war broke out in his country in December 1989, Emmanuel Bruce was a first-year student at the University of Liberia in Monrovia.

The war dashed his hopes of becoming a political scientist. Now, the 26-year-old lives a miserable life in the refugee camp that the Nigerian government set up in 1990 in this district 97 kms north of Lagos to house thousands of Liberians.

Bruce walks with the aid of crutches. Doctors had to put metal bars in his left leg to hold the bones together after it was mangled by bullets. He lost his father to the war and his mother is still missing.

His ambition is to go back to school. “I need a wheelchair and sponsorship to continue my education,” he told IPS. “I don’t want to be a liability when I go back to my country. If I have my degree, I can always work.”

“I have been disabled by the war and since this dilemma, no one has come to my aid, not even the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) or the NCFR (Nigerian National Commission for Refugees),” he said.

Some of the refugees — both men and women — have taken up jobs as teachers, secretaries and factory workers in the cities, while some of the women got married to Nigerian men in neighbouring villages.

But Bruce and others who are incapacitated depend wholly on rations from the NCFR and the UNHCR. So do people who, although physically fit, have no skills and have thus been unable to find jobs outside — Arthur Gbolor, for example.

Gbolor (27), who arrived in the camp in 1994, wants to be trained as a mechanic. “Some of us who are not skilled should be trained,” he told IPS. “We want to learn a trade and be an asset to our country when the war is over and we return home, but nobody is ready to sponsor us.

The refugees have other complaints too.

“Some people like to farm but there is no land,” Gbolor said. “The NCFR asked those without accommodation to build their own houses. Those who got the materials and could not build a house have their rations and the education of their children stopped.”

However, NCFR Executive Chair Abdulkadir Mohammed told IPS by telephone from Abuja that the commission, set up in 1992, had cleared 10 hectares of land in Oru for the refugees to farm while scholarships had been given to some of them. More than 70 are studying in various institutions of higher learning, according to Mohammed.

“Yes there is the problem of feeding, providing health and accommodation,” he admitted. “It is human nature, but our policy is to make the refugees self-reliant.”

“We want them to try their best in building houses on their own before we come to their help with some bundles of roofing sheets, four bags of cement and money for labour,” he explained.

The authorities of the camp, which has roughly 5,000 residents, about half of them children and roughly 30 percent women, have often described it as “the best in Africa”. But refugees told IPS that inadequate attention, reduced rations and neglect had led many to sell some of their property for food and forced some of the women to become sex workers.

“Everyone has to survive,” said Roseline George, one of the refugees. “The ladies are forced into prostitution because of the conditions here. They still have to live a normal life.”

Another Liberian who gave his name as Jackson said: “We are living on the fringes of society. Amenities here are not enough. Accommodation is a problem. Life is miserable here. Even though we do not hear the sound of guns in this place, it is frustrating.”

“Most of us would have preferred to go home and die in the war than suffering in a camp here,” he added.

IPS learnt from sources in the camp that the monthly ration had been reduced from 50 kgs of rice per family in the months that followed the establishment of the camp to three cups of rice, half a cup of beans and one litre of kerosene per adult.

A cup is about 250 grammes.

Though no official was in the camp when IPS visited it on Sep. 15, an official who declined to give his name said in Lagos that rations were cut because the refugees were selling their allocations.

This was confirmed by some of the refugees who explained that why they did so.

“We don’t get ingredients like oil, salt, pepper and enough kerosene to cook the rice and beans. The commission does not supply us sugar or even soap to wash our clothes, so most of us had to sell part of the ration to buy these items,” one man said.

“We are not allowed to talk to journalists but we should have freedom of speech,” he added. “The officials do not want necessary corrections so they try to fence us and our problems from the press and donor agencies.”

Nigeria’s political impasse and reduced foreign funding for the West African country are also said to have affected food rations. It is to offset this that the NCFR started clearing land for the refugees to grow food to complement their rations.

Their material problems are not the only ones the refugees grapple with. Life in the camp has also been soured by the political strife back home.

Friction increased in the camp when a mid-1995 peace accord between Liberia’s belligerents broke down earlier this year as a faction made up of people from the Krahn ethnic group battled a combined force led by Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) between April and July.

According to Bruce, the first refugees to arrive in Oru were Krahns, who fled Liberia after then president Samuel Doe, a Krahn, was killed by rebels in 1990.

“Since the Krahn group … were the first to arrive the camp, they claim superiority, but this place is an international camp. No one should be allowed to dominate,” Bruce said.

He said Taylor, who is a member of Liberia’s transitional government since September 1995, sent bags of rice to the camp early this year but the food was rejected by the Krahn group.

“If we are united as the various warring factions are now doing in our country, refugees here would have been greatly helped as we would be able to speak in one voice,” Bruce said.

But life still goes on for the refugees in Oru despite the shortcomings. The children go to a primary school set up by the Justice, Development and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church, which has also established a technical-home science school for women and a clinic in the camp.

Various committees have also been set up in the camp but most have been crippled by a lack of funds. One of the few that function is the Liberian Business Association, which gives loans to members to start small businesses.

The main hope of the refugees, however, is to be able to return home soon.

“My dad says we cannot go back to our country yet because they are still fighting there. I will be happy to go back as soon as the war ends,” says 12-year old Esther George, a fourth-year primary school pupil.