Nigeria’s plan to get first batch of its citizens stranded in Sudan airlifted back home on Friday suffered setback, NewsSpecng learnt.
The distruptiom in schedule, according to may not be unconnected with some issuee bothering on administrative, logistics and Diplomatic exigencies.
The Federal Government had announced on Thursday that the over 5,500 stranded Nigerian students would start arriving the country (Friday) yesterday from the Sudan.
Hundreds of people have been killed in nearly two weeks of conflict between the army and a rival paramilitary force – the RSF – which are locked in a power struggle threatening to destabilise the wider region.
The first indication that the airlifting would not be possible emerged when the Egyptian authorities denied 7000 Nationals including Nigerians the permission to cross the border into Egypt.
Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairman/CEO, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, (NIDCOM), revealed that over 7000 nationals, including Nigerians were stranded at the Egyptian border, calling on those concerned with passages and movement of persons and services along contiguous borders of Sudan to create a humane condition for the 7000 to have unfettered access to their various destinations.
Dabiri-Erewa said they were not allowed to cross the border into Egypt since their arrival late yesterday (Thursday) evening .
She added that the Nigerian mission in Egypt has been working tirelessly on this as the Egyptian authorities are insisting on visas by fellow Africans to transit back to their countries.
She appealed to the Egyptian authorities to kindly allow the already traumatised travellers to transit to their final destinations in various countries in Africa
Though sources in the presidency said the issues were being sorted out.
One of the sources told The Nation in Confidence said that the report from there is that it was no longer feasible for them to airlift them on Friday.
The source said after 14 hours on the road, the people might not be in the best condition to travel by air for another five hours straight.
Besides, the source said they also needed to be profiled before boarding and so all these would not make it possible for them to come in today.
” They are not coming back today again, that I can assure you. They are not coming back today due to some administrative, logistics and diplomatic issues.
“These things are being sorted out. Don’t forget that they will not just start boarding immediately they arrive Egypt from Sudan
“They will have to be profiled before they would start boarding and this takes time.
“So, as far as I know, all these put together have made it impossible for them to arrive in the country today (Friday).”
