The Federal Government will tomorrow begin to evacuate at least 4,000 Nigerians outside the country.
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This is even as it said it was still striving to secure enough spaces to accommodate that number for the mandatory 14-day quarantine.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, made this disclosure at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
According to Onyeama, evacuation flights for Nigerians will commence with an Emirates flight from Dubai to Lagos tomorrow and would be followed by a BA flight on Friday, from London to Lagos, and Ethiopian Airlines from the United States, adding that the evacuees will be mandatorily quarantined in hotels and monitored for 14 days.
According to him, the biggest challenge in bringing Nigerians back was where to quarantine them on arrival.
While noting that there was a large number of Nigerians in China who needed to come back, Onyeama said: âWe want to do it as quickly as possible, but it hasnât been easy. Within two weeks, we hope we can do that.â
The Federal Government had said interested persons would be responsible for the cost of logistics to return to the country. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had also stated that the financial implications would be borne by the prospective evacuees, who would be compulsorily quarantined when they returned.
Onyeama said the change in date for evacuation of Nigerians from different parts of the world originally scheduled to commence Monday May 4 was caused by the constraints in resources.
The Nigerians waiting to be evacuated are mainly in China, which has become controversial as reports have alleged that some Nigerians were being maltreated in the city of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. Other countries include the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, and India, among others.
Onyeama said: âBy Godâs grace, on Wednesday, we would start the process of repatriating our nationals from outside the country. There are about almost 4,000 Nigerians wishing to come back home. If we had our way, we would bring them all back immediately and all at once, but there are various constraints and the biggest constraints is where to quarantine them, the beds.
âWe have done everything we can to get beds here in Abuja and in Lagos. In Lagos, we have almost 300 beds available, and I would like to take some time out to again express our gratitude to the governor of Lagos State because, without his personal engagement, it would have been more difficult for us. So, the first flight (Emirates) on Wednesday will be to Lagos.â
The minister added that the country was also making arrangements for a British Airways flight coming to Nigeria on Friday to evacuate some British nationals in Nigeria, since the plane would be coming empty, Nigeri had negotiated with the British government to bring Nigerians from the United Kingdom (UK) on Friday. He, however, regretted that the plane would not be coming to Abuja, where the government has made available over 1,000 hotel rooms for the evacuees.
âSo, we are hoping that, on Friday, we will be able to evacuate from the UK anything up to 300 Nigerians from the UK. Ideally, we would have liked that flight to be coming to Abuja because we have been able to secure more hotel rooms (almost 1,000) in Abuja than we have in Lagos but, unfortunately, that plane cannot come to Abuja but only Lagos.
âSo, it is going to put quite a strain on our capacity in Lagos because, in addition to just getting the rooms, the Port Health Authority, the NCDC will have to monitor every one of the evacuees on regular basis and, of course, the security elements have to be in place and all their other support services have to be in place and they are not all available for the evacuees because the numbers are going up in the country and resources, human and material, are the real challenges that we are facing,â Onyeama said.
For Nigerians in the US, the minister noted that the Nigerian missions in New York, Washington and Atlanta were trying to strike a deal with the US authorities for any flight available to bring back Nigerians. He added that government was making arrangements with an Ethiopian Airlines flight that does regular commercial operations in the US to bring back Nigerians on Monday next week.
He added that Nigeriaâs Air Peace plane chartered for a medical evacuation of a Nigerian couple to take a family member to London would also be engaged to evacuate Nigerians, since the plane will be coming back from London empty: âSo we are hoping to strike a deal with Air peace on Saturday to bring our people.â
On Nigerians who in China, Onyeama said, âChina is a huge crisis and we are trying to see if we can get a plane quickly to go and evacuate our people who are in large numbers in China, who also have additional challenges. We are trying to source funds to also support these compatriots of ours, but there are capacity issues.
âIt has not been easy sourcing a plane but we are making arrangements with one of the carriers and we are hoping that, within two weeks, we will be able to move to China and bring back our people and those who are in South Africa, India in France,â he said.
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