Eto’o Urges Help For ‘Unnoticed’ Boko Haram Victims

Africa’s most decorated footballer, Samuel Eto’o, has appealed for funding to help people escaping violence in Nigeria and Cameroon and warned that the world is neglecting an escalating humanitarian crisis in West Africa.

A six-year campaign by the Boko Haram

sect to carve out an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria has killed thousands, uprooted 2.2 million people within the country and driven around 160,000 Nigerians to seek refuge in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Cross-border raids and suicide bombings by suspected Boko Haram forces have displaced more than 80,000 people over the last year in Cameroon’s Far North region, which is also home to 60,000 Nigerian refugees who have fled attacks by the militants since the start of 2013.

Yet Cameroon’s record goal scorer fears the conflict and ensuing displacement are being ignored as global attention remains fixed upon Europe’s burgeoning migration crisis.

“There are different classes of crisis now and no one seems to notice the displaced in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria,” the four times African player of the year and twice African Nations Cup winner told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“When you see the population in refugee camps growing from 6,000 to 50,000 people in less than a year, you realise how serious the situation is,” he added.

Reuters reported that Eto’o, who plays for Turkish team Antalyaspor, was speaking after hosting a fundraising ball in London for the Yellow Whistle Blower FC initiative, which launched in March and has raised 50,000 pounds ($76,500) so far.

The money is being used by Oxfam and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) to help the displaced and provide food, water and medicine to people living in makeshift refugee camps.