The Secretary General of ECOWAS Parliament, Mr John Azumah, has said that 40 per cent of the total 70 million refugees in the world are drawn from the 16 West African nations with Boko Haram insurgency displacing 1.2 million Nigerians alone.
Azumah, who spoke Monday at the launch of the West African Parliamentary Press Corps in Abuja, attributed the high rate of refugees in the West African sub region to insurgency-triggered humanitarian crises.
According to him, humanitarian situations in the region are products of bad and unimaginative governance.
He expressed regret that despite the efforts being made in West Africa, the region is plagued with multiple crises.
“For instance, Nigeria’s North-east, North-west and North-central are ravaged by Boko Haram terrorism and farmer-herder clashes, which has resulted in the killing of over 20,000 people and with about 2.1 million people displaced.
“This carnage has caused huge humanitarian crisis such that there appear to be a lethargy of addressing the crises with funds by the international agencies.
“In Mali, insurgency has run down the country and displaced many. These crises are replicated in many parts of the region.
“According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), West Africa is one of the regions of the world with the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons estimated to constitute about 40 per cent of the 70 million refugees and displaced persons in the world,” he said.
The ECOWAS Parliament scribe blamed the sorry state of the region on bad governance which, according to him, had rendered many affected countries financially impotent to the point of depending on funds from donor agencies to implement their yearly budgets.
As a way out of the bad situations, Azumah tasked the media and civil society organisations across the 16 countries in the region to hold their various governments accountable.
The vibrancy of the media, according to him, is evaluated based on the degree of consciousness of the citizens in challenging leaders to live up to their duties and obligations.
