The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has announced its plans to evacuate over 2,000 Nigerians who are currently in Sudan amid the country’s crisis.
NEMA’s Director, Special Duties, Onimode Bandele, explained that the process of evacuation is to be coordinated between the Nigerian embassy in Khartoum and the NEMA director-general, Mustapha Habib, with around 2,650-2,800 Nigerians, including embassy staff and their families, expected to move immediately.
This comes after the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffery Onyeama, had revealed in an interview that the airport in the capital, Khartoum, had been shut down and the only option left was to evacuate Nigerians out of Sudan via land.
In response to the situation, Air Peace, a Nigerian airline company, has expressed its willingness to evacuate Nigerians stranded in Sudan free of charge, with the chairman, Allen Onyema, stating that the situation requires immediate action and cannot be left to the government alone. In a similar vein, the Chairman/CEO of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has urged Nigerian students in Sudan to remain on their campuses to avoid danger.
Dabiri-Erewa also cautioned against the mobilisation efforts of the National Association of Nigeria Students (NANS), which involves pooling funds to transport Nigerian students in the North African country away from their campuses.
She stated that the Nigerian mission had informed students of a point of connection from where buses would convey them, with some borders in Egypt being the most likely pick-up points, from where the students would be transported home by air.
