Nigeria: Cameroon Anglophone Refugees Turn To Farming For Survival

By Boris Esono Nwenfor & Sonita Ngunyi Nwohtazie

Under dire living conditions, Anglophone refugees who fled the conflict in the North West and South West Regions to Nigeria have resorted to farming as a means of survival and sustenance.

In a tale that speaks volumes on the entrepreneurial and self-reliant spirit in their DNA, displaced persons living the in the Adagom3 refugee settlement in Nigeria’s Cross River State will benefit from a Training of Trainers in Mushroom Production from May 17-25 ,2023.

The initiative spearheaded by Gerard Tiko’or Akenji, a Cameroonian refugee who has lived in the settlement for several years now, has garnered support from a growing number of credible partners .USAID,WINROCK International, The Fomunyoh Foundation, Unifarm, Victoria Relief Foundation, Atem Foundation, MAMF Global Ltd and others are amongst the partners who have endorsed and thrown their weight behind the initiative that is having a  positive impact the lives of refugees and the community at large.

“Looking at the fact that these Cameroonian refugees living in Nigeria, have very minimal financial assistance, this mushroom project idea was conceived as a result of the low living standards of the refugees,” Gerard Tiko’or Akenji told Pan African Visions

“The mushroom project is a sustainability project that is aimed at helping refugees not only as food but also as a good source of income to raise their living standards. Through this project of “Training of Trainers” participants will be able to train others and create more businesses,” Akenji says.

“This project will go a long way to help not only refugees but also members of the host communities as a source of food and income. The training is mostly for refugees from the three settlements who will later be able to train others on mushroom production.”

Within a year of fleeing his home country Cameroon, because of the ongoing Anglophone conflict, Gerard Akenji had crafted a business plan and launched United Farmers’ Cooperative (Unifarm), a refugee-run agricultural co-op working in partnership with the host community in Ogoja, Cross River State, Nigeria.

“I didn’t want to stay idle,” Gerard Tiko’or Akenji told UNHCR Nigeria in 2021. “The day after arriving here in the camp, I went around to see what I could do.” A year later, he led a farming cooperative out of the Adagom3 refugee settlement that improves the lives of some 250 people in Nigeria’s Cross River State.

“… Farming is my passion. We spoke to a few people, and they were interested.” “What I like is that most of the farmers have learned something new that they can use if they go back,” Gerard Tiko’or Akenji says.

The initiative attracted locals who joined like Ogazi Martin Ede, a businessman and driver, and others, some of whom were even inspired to farm for the first time in their lives. The joint initiative refugees and members of the host community calls itself United Farmers.

In addition to mushroom farming, the refugees under the leadership of Akenji are heavily into pig farming. Despite the challenges, we are over 200 hundred pig farmers now, he says. An animal feed processing unit in the camp could also be very helpful, says Akenji who also thinks a borehole will ease challenges of water supply.

Events in Cameroon in recent years have obliged the Fomunyoh Foundation-TFF to tilt more of its resources towards humanitarian assistance. Since the start of the Anglophone crisis in 2016, Dr Christopher Fomunyoh has been very consistent on how to break the deadlock. According to him, this crisis is more than one government can handle and drive to a logical end.

Touched by the plight of these refugees in Nigeria, a TFF team led by its President in partnership with Community Refugee Relief Initiative (CRRI) spent the 2021 Easter holiday visiting and supporting refugees in some localities in Nigeria. The NGOs distributed food items such as rice, noodles, and fruit juice among others to refugee camps in rural, and urban areas as well as major cities, including Calabar, Oban, Akor, Adagom I & III, Okend, Ajasor and Basua all in Cross River State; Ikyogen in Benue State and Abuja.

The conflict between the government and separatists from the English-speaking minority, which started in 2017 has killed over 6,000 people. It has displaced 765,000 people, of whom over 70,000 are refugees in Nigeria. According to the UN, 2.2 million of the Anglophone regions’ four million people need humanitarian support while about 600,000 children have been deprived of effective schooling because of the conflict.

Since leaving his home country because of the violence, Gerard says the living conditions at the settlement are not better, but he finds solace that “we do not hear the sound of guns and explosives.” Twenty-three thousand Cameroonian refugees are living in the three settlements in Ogoja, Cross River State, Nigeria.

“We live in very deplorable conditions, no mosquito nets, lack of portable drinking water, UNHCR Cash-based intervention has been reduced to two thousand six hundred nairas per month per refugee and this is often paid after four to five months, after a webinar with Penn State University, we saw this as a good livelihood option for us since we don’t have farmland,” says Gerard.

“Yes, we need other support, not only financial support but also empowerment that can be able to support us for a long time. My wish is that the international community comes in and mediates for a lasting solution (to the ongoing conflict in the North West and South West Regions),” Gerald concluded.