Another group of stranded Nigerians in Sudan have arrived at Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport following a war break-out in the North African country.
About one hundred and twenty-five (125) evacuees, including twenty-two (22) children, had landed with the Tarco Airlines Boeing seven hundred and thirty-seven (737) from Port Sudan at 5 pm Nigerian time on Saturday.
The evacuees were received by officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the National Commissionfor Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Nigerians Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM).
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Reports held that Nigerian immigration officials were using passports and Emergency Travel Certificates (ETCs) to bring evacuees into the country.
The development was the first evacuation since President Bola Tinubu took office on May 29.
Recall that the federal government stated on May 14 that about a hundred and sixty (160) women in Sudan who identified themselves as Nigerians did not have passports to fly back to the country.
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The Director-General of NEMA, Mustafa Ahmed, said the agency was being cautious not to evacuate non-Nigerians.
Before the evacuation began, the Nigerian Diaspora Council disclosed that there were about three million Nigerians in Sudan, including five thousand (5,000) students.
However, NEMA explained that apart from the two thousand five hundred and eighteen (2,518) Nigerians that have been evacuated so far and the fifteen (15) flights that have taken place, the citizenship status of many who claim to be Nigerians was yet to be ascertained.
