The planned airlifting of Nigerians from Sudan was delayed for hours because the number of passengers exceeded the capacity of the plane.
There were 376 Nigerians at the airport but the C130 Nigerian Airforce plane and Airpeace could only convey 350 passangers.
The agreement reached with the Egyptian Authorities was that only the number of seats available would be allowed to come through their border.
The Egyptian had warned that it would not tolerate any Nigerian loitering at the airport.
Hence, the stringent conditions issued before allowing the 637 stranded Nigerians to cross into their border.
Consequently, they were not ready to allow the extra 26 Nigerians stay back at the airport neither are they ready to return them back to the border.
The situation was however saved by the Airforce plane who agreed to carry the extra 26 passengers.
The Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, NiDCOM, Abike Dabiri-Erewa explained that hours of delay was caused by the number of passangers.
Dabiri-Erewa said the Egyptian authorities insisted that no one will leave if number of evacuees exceeds what the Aircrafts can take.
She said, “Hours of delays Yes. The number of passengers did not match.
“Egypt insisted no one will leave if numbers more than aircrafts can take.
“Bags in NAF were taken into AirPeace cargo to create more space for the 26 passangers.
“It took hours, but now sorted.”
Throwing more light on the reason behind the delay, a female givernment official in a voice note said: “The two aircraft were supposed to airlift 350 Nigerians. Unfortunately, 26 other people sneaked into the buses. Now, the Egyptian personnel were there, they counted and found out that 26 more Nigerians were there, instead of 350, they found 376.
“Now, the issue is that they refused to allow the 26 people stay back in the airport and they also refused to allow Nigerian officials to take the 26 people back to the border.
“Now, they want everybody to leave, they don’t want anybody to be left behind neither will they allow them to go back to the border.
“The only option is to overload the aircraft. The pilots were consulted and they assured that they cannot airlift more as the people have plenty luggage.
“The issue now is that only if the luggage will be dropped to airlift the students back to Nigeria or no plane will leave without taking everybody.
“Should we ask them to drop the luggage and bring back the students and later on bring the luggages or should we ask them to stop?”
The evacuation flight left Aswan at about 5pm.
Aswan is about five hours flight to Abuja with a normal flight but will take about extra one hour with the C130 military aircraft.
