Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairperson, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), says the first batch of stranded Nigerians in Sudan evacuated by the federal government will arrive in Abuja on Friday.
A boeing 777 from Air Peace is expected to depart Lagos by Thursday evening and transport the first batch home, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
Speaking at a press briefing, Dabiri-Erewa said a total of 13 out of the 40 buses hired to transport Nigerians from the troubled Sudan already left since Wednesday.
She said they would travel by road to the Aswan border in Egypt where both the Nigerian embassy staff in the north African country and the director-general of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) will receive the evacuees.
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Dabiri-Erewa said 10 of those buses transported Nigerians from Universities in Khartoum while the remaining three buses were dispatched to El- Razi University to continue the evacuation.
She said children and women were given priority as they were profiled for administrative purposes, and assured that all Nigerians who registered to be evacuated home would all be facilitated irrespective of status, gender, and state.
She noted that Nigerians made up the highest number of foreigners in Sudan with three million residents, adding that the evacuation process was part of the government’s effort to repatriate citizens stranded in the war-torn country.
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Earlier, there were reports of some Nigerian students in an unidentified location, saying they were stranded and raising an alarm over their security following their departure from Sudan.
In a subsequent tweet, Dabiri-Erewa said the issue had been resolved.
I have just spoken to the @nemanigeria . They have started moving and the issues between Nema and the transport company have been resolved https://t.co/LZzYToWFxH
— world (@s2_vpd) April 27, 2023
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