Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zubairu Dada has clarified that so far, no Nigerian life has been lost in the bloody crisis which has engulfed Sudan.
He stated this at a media briefing after the Federal Executive Council Meeting, adding that the Federal Government had already perfected plans to evacuate over 5,000 citizens in the war-torn country.
He stated that the first batch of Nigerians is being conveyed as of yesterday, confirming that citizens will be conveyed via buses through Egypt and consequently airlifted.
Diplomats, women, and children are to be prioritised in the evacuation process.
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Eleven days of heavy fighting until Monday has killed hundreds of people, left bodies rotting in the streets, and some neighbourhoods of greater Khartoum in ruins.
The latest conflict is between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against those of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed militia that then-president Omar al-Bashir unleashed in the Darfur region two decades ago, leading to war crimes charges against Bashir and others.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that the Federal Government of Nigeria had yesterday (Wednesday) begun the evacuation of about 5,500 Nigerians, including students stranded in Khartoum and other cities in Sudan.
The government has released N150 million to hire 40 buses to transport its needy nationals from Sudan to Cairo in Egypt in order to assist the return.
The money was transferred by the Central Bank of Nigeria through the National Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday at 12:37 p.m. to an unnamed transport business.
Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, verified the money had been made on Tuesday and mentioned that the evacuees would depart on Wednesday morning.
The evacuation is taking place in the midst of a three-day ceasefire that the Rapid Support Force and the Sudanese armed forces claimed would begin at midnight on Tuesday.