The Federal Government claims it is awaiting assurance from the Sudanese Government, before evacuating Nigerian students from Sudan
Remember that the ongoing regional crisis has left over 4000 Nigerians stranded in Sudan.
Geoffrey Onyeama, the minister of foreign affairs for Nigeria, provided insight into what the government is doing in a Channels Television interview on Sunday. He said that in order to avoid endangering the lives of Nigerian citizens, the government must make sure it has the full support of the government of Sudan before evacuating.
He claimed that in an unsafe situation, the Federal Government does not want to evacuate Nigerian citizens.
According to Onyeama, the government is attempting to obtain permission so that it can evacuate Nigerians from the area along a safe corridor.
The Minister claimed that because there are more than 5,000 Nigerians living in Sudan, the situation with the government is difficult.
“I don’t think we are sluggish; the countries evacuated yesterday and a day before, no government had evacuated before then. The reason is that it is not as if there was a military war against another country.
“The President and the Vice President of a country started shouting at each other. Of Course, it started getting worse and that is why countries started looking at evacuating their people. The advantage these people have, the US, Italy, and France, have is that they don’t have 5,000 citizens in Sudan like Nigeria.
“Tomorrow, we could start hiring cars and buses to start moving our people out, but this would put their lives at risk. And no responsible government will do that.
“What we need at the moment, which one or two countries have done, is for the Sudanese Government to assure us that we can drive and convey our citizens to the borders of our choice. The Egyptian border or to port Sudan; the Ethiopian border is not an option because I understand the road is unsafe. So once we go there, we are ready to go.
"We are in touch with the embassy and they are in touch with a large number of Nigerian students, but we don’t want to take that risk; because tomorrow, if we give the green light and there is an ambush, we will be responsible for that. The responsible thing to do is to ensure we have the full backing of the Government of Sudanâ€, he explained.
The infighting between two Generals on April 16, 2023, led to the cause of the Sudanese crisis.
A severe crisis has developed in the country's capital, Khartoum, as a result of tensions between the Generals of the Sudanese Army, led by Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, a group under the command of Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
A French national was reported to be shot on Sunday when gunmen opened fire on a French convoy while it was in the process of evacuation.