The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) announced on Tuesday that the Nigerian Embassy in Egypt has successfully relocated evacuees from the Sudanese side to the Egyptian side of the Arqeel Border, amid ongoing conflict in Sudan. The students are being prepared for departure to Abuja via the Aswan Airport in Egypt, with AirPeace and the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) plane waiting to convey them to their destination. The evacuation is prioritising female students in an “orderly movement” of the 449 students across the border. The first batch is expected to arrive in Abuja “in a couple of hours”. The Wadi Halfa group will be evacuated by the team at Abu Simbel on Wednesday morning, while the Port Sudan border group will be evacuated last, as they only arrived on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded on Tuesday to a viral video on social media alleging that the Nigerian Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan had refused to evacuate people of Igbo extraction. The ministry confirmed that the allegation was “misleading” and that there was “no truth whatsoever” to it. The Nigerian Embassy in Khartoum confirmed that evacuees of Igbo extraction were among the first batch of 637 Nigerians evacuated to Aswan Border, Egypt, where they are awaiting their eventual return to Nigeria. The embassy had made more buses available to accommodate every Nigerian national in Sudan who indicated an interest in being evacuated, despite scuffles between the students and other Nigerian residents due to the limited number of buses. The ministry defended embassy officials who had worked “tirelessly” on the evacuation exercise and advised the general public to disregard the allegation.
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