Sudan: ‘Stranded Nigerian Students Contributing Transport Fare To Egypt’
One of the Nigerian students trapped in crisis-torn Sudan, Abubakar Sadiq, has said that his colleagues are gathering money to transport themselves to neighbouring Egypt.
The student, who spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, said he does not know the particular date he will be evacuated from Sudan as the Nigerian Embassy has not made any communication to that effect.
“There is no date because we didn’t receive any information from the Embassy. And today also, there is zero presence of the embassy, so we don’t know actually. Right now students are planning to gather their money to transport themselves to Egypt,” he said.
Sadiq said the drivers of the buses conveying the students collected their passports from them, insisting that it won’t be returned to them until they are paid completely by the government.
He said the criteria that were set for evacuating Nigerian students from Sudan have been abandoned, and it is now a case of “survival of the fittest”.
“The criteria were to select some percentage from each and every state based on the percentage of number of the state associations and that criteria was abandoned.
“It was only done for the first bus that was there, but for the second and rest of the buses is the survival of the fittest, whoever goes in first he will not go out,” Sadiq stated.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, had on Wednesday disclosed that the Nigerian government hired 40 buses at $1.2 million for the evacuation of Nigerian citizens from the war-torn North African country.
Subsequently, some batch of students reportedly boarded the bus provided by the government to Egypt where they will be airlifted back to Nigeria.
However, a video emerged on Thursday where some of the students lamented being abandoned in an unknown place in the desert.
The Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has since said that the issue has been resolved and the students were back on their way to Egypt.
