Cameroon’s five-year conflict is spilling over into Nigeria, where the armed forces are struggling to secure the border as they battle jihadists, bandit gangs and separatists of their own elsewhere.
Cameroonian security forces and separatist gunmen care little for the territorial integrity of their neighbours where they have carried out cross-border raids, attacks on villages and made illegal arrests.
Manga lived though the bloody experience at the end of last year.
On November 17 around 50 armed separatists crossed over from Cameroon, attacking the village and killing five people including Manga’s 70-year-old chief, residents say.
Dozens of bullet holes still mark the earthen walls of the chief’s house and its upper part is charred by fire.
‘I had never heard gunshots like that,’ said Abubakar Manga, the chief’s brother, who managed to escape on a canoe from where he watched the attack.
‘We still don’t understand,’ he told AFP.
Two days before, about 30 Cameroonians had found refuge in Manga, after the attack on their village in Cameroon.
‘In my village, the separatists confronted the army, but did not attack us,’ said one of these refugees.
‘But suddenly they changed and started destroying our houses,’ said the man who spoke on condition of anonymity for his security.
Cameroon’s war has killed more than 6,000 people and forced one million Cameroonians to flee their homes as they are caught between the army and the rebels.
The war broke out in October 2017 when militants declared an independent state in the Northwest region and Southwest region, home to most of the anglophone minority in a country that is 80 percent French-speaking.
Since then, more than 250 villages have been destroyed, in terrible revenge by either the separatists or soldiers against populations accused of supporting the opposing camp.
‘We fled to Manga to take shelter,’ the refugee said, explaining how they believed they would be safe in Nigeria and not suffer violence for a second time.
But the separatist fighters are not the only ones who have expanded their fight to the other side of the Nigerian border.
In October, around 60 Cameroonian soldiers invaded the villages of Mairogo and Tosso, harassing and intimidating their inhabitants, according to the UN and local authorities.
‘They were looking for armed separatists who had fled to Nigeria,’ local elected official Joseph Ammamzalla told AFP.
Cameroonian authorities suspect that separatists are hiding among the 70,000 Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria.
For Cameroon officials, eastern Nigeria is also one of the sources of arms supply for the separatists.
In January and February 2022, Cameroonian soldiers again invaded Mairogo, according to the local official.
