Sudan: 131 new evacuees arrive, 800 expected Sunday

The Federal Government says no fewer than 800 Nigerian evacuees are expected to arrive in Nigeria from Aswan, Egypt on Sunday.

The Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency, Mustapha Ahmed, stated this after receiving the third batch of 131 evacuees from Port Sudan in Abuja.

The Tarco airline plane B737-300 that conveyed the third batch of returnees touched down at 1.45pm on Saturday.

Speaking at the reception for the returnees, Ahmed stated, “We have aircraft on the ground as we speak; two are in Aswan and our people are on their way to the airport. So, hopefully, they will take off tomorrow morning and by tomorrow afternoon or evening, we will receive a large batch of almost 800 students.

“For Port Sudan, we will continue with the evacuation. Tarco is going back. Azman Air is going to do a back-to-back trip because of its 400-seater capacity and we have already started engaging Air Peace to go back because of the 274-seater capacity.”

Small planes usage

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management of Social Development, Nasir Sani-Gwarzo, has explained why only small planes can evacuate Nigerians stranded in Port Sudan. He however said efforts were on to get permits from the Sudanese government and other neighbouring countries so as to send bigger planes.

Sani-Gwarzo promised that more planes would be going to Sudan to evacuate Nigerians.

He said, “More aircraft will go. Our limitation has not been the ability to send aircraft but the fact that large aircraft cannot go to Port Sudan at the moment except smaller ones, otherwise, you would have seen about 500 at a go but we are still working with the Sudanese government and those countries along the route to make sure that large aircraft can go. With that, I assure you in less than 24 hours, we will finish the evacuation.”

On returnees who were sick, Sani-Gwarzo said they would receive adequate medical care. “There are three people that are sick. I interacted with them and we are taking them to the hospital. One has a wound in his hand and two others have severe abdominal pain due to ulcer. We sent them to the hospital not because their condition is bad but we want the best for them. From the hospital, they will go home because they look stable but we don’t want to take any chances.”

The Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, disclosed that the returnees would undergo trauma counselling.

She stated, “There will be trauma counselling for all the returnees because they have gone through a lot of trauma. Watch out for information on various websites of the emergency team on various counselling for everyone. We are talking to Dangote and some other Non-Governmental Organisations about that.”

A total of 637 evacuees have been evacuated from Egypt and Port Sudan since the country started airlifting on Wednesday.

The first batch of 376 was airlifted on Wednesday night while the second batch of 130 was airlifted by a Sudanese aircraft, Tarco, on Friday.