The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama has stated that the federal government has concluded arrangements to evacuate Nigerians stranded abroad on account of the coronavirus pandemic. He disclosed that about 2,000 Nigerians in the United States of America, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, China and other countries had registered for the evacuation.
On the arrangements, the minister said ‘’We have just signed and agreed with two airlines, we negotiated what we feel are good rates. Since the evacuees are expected to pay, we wanted to get as good a deal as possible. Now that’s done. The next challenge is accommodation; everything has to be absolutely ready. We actually determined that when we start everything should go very smoothly and so we really want to take all the necessary steps to ensure that would be the case’’.
Mr Onyeama further stated that government was looking at flying the evacuees in batches of 200 each, which is the maximum number that the isolation centres can accommodate at a time. And because the evacuees will have to be in the isolation centres for a period of 14 days upon arrival, the flights will have to be arranged accordingly.
Although coming late, most Nigerians will nevertheless be happy and relieved that at last the federal government is making arrangements to bring back Nigerians who were stranded as a result of the global lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19.
A number of these Nigerians had travelled abroad for business, medical, leisure and official reasons and got caught up as the pandemic assumed greater dimensions leading to more drastic measures to curb its spread. These measures which included reduction of flights by international airlines and closure of airports to flights caught many international travellers including Nigerians stranded.
We have seen how countries that had the means and contingency arrangements for such emergencies promptly put in measures to evacuate their stranded citizens across the world. Here in Nigeria, we have witnessed examples of this, where flights were arranged to ferry foreign nationals resident and working in Nigeria back to their various countries. Indeed, one of the countries even contacted and secured the use of a Nigerian airline in this regard.
While we want to commend the federal government for finally putting up arrangements to evacuate our stranded compatriots, it must be said that the delay in doing so does not cast our country in good light. The tension and anxiety that built up back home in Nigeria as a result of the uncertainty would not have happened had the government been pro-active enough on the matter. The reported maltreatment of stranded Nigerians in China, the anguish of relations of those on medical treatment abroad and the worries of parents whose children and wards were caught up while the government dithered on what to do leaves much to be desired on how government responds to such emergencies concerning Nigerians both here and abroad.
Time and again, it is disheartening to see our governments often caught unprepared when Nigeria is faced with situations such as these, which by now we should have had well drilled contingency arrangements to handle as they happen.
We believe that the scope of the present arrangements to evacuate Nigerians by the government needs to be expanded. It is understood that majority of our compatriots have return tickets as requirements for their visas to travel abroad. We recommend that the Nigerian government enter into bilateral discussions on how those with such tickets will be evacuated using either the airlines of those countries in which they are stranded or any local or foreign airline that can agree to pick up the tabs to be guaranteed by the Nigerian government. We hope in that way, the stranded Nigerians to be evacuated will not be overburdened with additional costs of having to pay for a ticket when they already have one.
We also call on the government to hasten to build more isolation centres in order to quicken the evacuation. Going by the arrangements of evacuation flights of 200 persons per flight as stated by the minister of foreign affairs and the 14-day mandatory period of isolation before another flight, it will take 140 days or 4 months to completely evacuate the 2,000 registered Nigerians stranded abroad. The government should therefore, do the needful in this regard so as not to worsen the plight of our stranded compatriots abroad.
