Twelve Nigerian refugees, including a pregnant woman and four infants, were killed and 22 others injured in traffic accident which occurred on Thursday near Maroua, in its far north Cameroonas announced on Friday by the governor of the region, Bakari Midiwa.
A minibus that left Mokolo and was approaching Marua, its destination, 80 kilometers to the east, was involved in the accident at around 19:00 when one of the front tires “exploded”according to eyewitnesses cited by state broadcaster CRTV.
About 30 passengers, all “refugees” with Nigerian citizenship, were staying in Minawao and were traveling to “get their monthly ration,” the governor told CRTV. The bus was “overloaded”, its condition was poor and the tires “completely worn out”, he explained.
The 22 injured were taken to a hospital in Maroua.
In a camp in Minawao, about 30 kilometers from the border with Nigeria, live more than 76,000 refugees who fled their homes to escape the jihadist violence that has raged in the northeast of their country since 2009, according to the UN.
At least 6,000 people die each year on Cameroon's roads, a death rate of 30 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in Africa, according to the World Bank and the latest available data from the World Health Organization ( WHO), which were made public in 2018.
These numbers are seven times higher than the official figures for road traffic deaths. According to statistics provided by a Ministry of Transport official and published in a national circulation newspaper in June 2022, 963 people were killed due to traffic accidents in 2021.
Source: News Beast
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