Five persons have been reportedly killed by suspected Cameroonian gendarmes in Bakassi Local Government Council of Cross River State.
Ekpo Ekpo Bassey, chairman of the council, said the incident occurred weekend when the gendarmes opened fire on defenseless Nigerians including Efut Obot Ikot, a settlement in the peninsula.
The director-general of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Vincent Aqua, together with Florence Ita-Giwa, a Bakassi native, have donated tons of relief materials to the displaced Bakassi indigenes and appealed to the authorities to help with more donations.
At their meeting with the displaced Nigerians, Ita-Giwa again emphasised the need for the people to be properly resettled in their chosen place in order to avoid continuous maiming and slaughtering of Bakassi indigenes in Cameroon Republic.
Bassey said that the five Nigerians killed were those that had accepted
Cameroonian sovereignty but were living in their traditional homeland of Efut Obot Ikot.
The council boss said that the Cameroonian authorities stormed the settlement, beating women and setting houses belonging to Nigerians ablaze while those that resisted arrest were either maimed or killed.
He said 600 children of the 1,800 Nigerians that were forcefully ejected last week by the Cameroonian authorities are now exposed to health hazards hence a strong appeal to the Nigerian government to urgently come to their aid in order to avoid an epidemic.
“We strongly appeal to kind-hearted individuals, Nigerian government and foreign agencies to look into the plight of women particularly the identified 600 Nigerian children whose health has been endangered as a result of the forceful ejection of their parents from their traditional homeland in the Bakassi peninsula.
“Their forceful ejection has now produced refugee problem for the Cross River State government and in particular, Bakassi LGA, which shares a common boundary with the Cameroon Republic”, he said.
He lamented the action of Cameroonians which he described as a complete violation of the Green Tree Agreement of the International Court of Justice.
MIKE ABANG, Calabar
