UNHCR lauds Nigeria for hosting 61,000 refugees amid huge crisis

Despite Nigeria’s vast humanitarian crisis, it is also playing host to over 61,000 refugees and asylum seekers from neighbouring countries, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has stated.

The agency’s representative to Nigeria, Chansar Kapaya, made the submission during a stakeholders’ meeting on implementing the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) at the weekend in Abuja.

The GCR, she explained, was an attempt by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018 to bring about an act of solidarity recognising the international community’s shared responsibility for protecting, assisting, and finding solutions to refugees.

Kapaya noted most of the immigrants were Camerounians running from political tensions in the Northwest of the country since 2017.

She indicated that UNHCR, working with the Nigerian government, had recorded hundreds of arrivals monthly.

The UN official added that the most populous black nation had been providing safe haven and essential life-saving basic services for the refugees.