It is cheery news for Nigerian students stranded in Khartoum, Sudan as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama revealed has promised the Federal Government will pick the bills of their evacuation
Onyeama however said this opportunity is not available to other categories of returnees.
The Nation reports there are over 2,000 Nigerians stranded abroad as a result of lockdown over the Covid-19 pandemic who have indicated interest to return home.
The Government, in its planned evacuation, said they will be evacuated in batches.
Onyeama, however, said that the Federal Government has decided to come to the rescue of the students.
He explained that such magnanimity cannot be extended to others that are to be evacuated because of the paucity of fund.
He said: “The financial aspect of this is one that we are also very mindful off. You know, we have some students who are stuck in Khartoum, Sudan.
“Of course, we have to bend backward because they are students, young children to find resources to pay for their return and also for their two weeks isolation.
“But unfortunately, for all the others, we just don’t have the financial resources. As you can see, there is a huge amount of money that we have to pay for various aspects of the challenge.
“So, unfortunately and source of great regret to the government that we are not in the position to pay. If we have the resources, we would be more than happy to pay for anybody to come home free of charge, pay for their stay in isolation centre for two weeks. But the reality, is we just don’t and that is just the situation for now.”
On the possibility of the government increasing the numbers of returnees that can be evacuated at a go, the minister said: ” We got medical advice and we asked the medical people what was possible and the figure we were given was 200 in Lagos and 200 in Abuja.
“Of course, this is much less than the numbers that are waiting to come back. But we get constrained by the facilities that are available and unfortunately, we have the internal challenges as you can see the figures are going up all the time.
“So we have a great responsibility to also ensure that these facilities are also there to deal with the needed challenges we are facing.
“But if opportunities present itself and we find that more facilities become available then of course we would look at the possibility of expanding and increasing the numbers of people we can bring back.
“But the fact of the matter is that at this moment, this is the base that we have been told we can operate.”