Sudan Crisis: Air Peace Airline offers free evacuation to stranded Nigerians as Coalition of Northern condemns delay

 

Nigerian flag carrier, Air Peace airline, has offered to airlift Nigerians trapped in Sudan back home free of charge. Chairman of the airline, Allen Onyema, on Monday, said the cries of Nigerian students angling to return home to safety were too harrowing to ignore.

 

While he acknowledged the attendant danger of the exercise, Onyema said: “If the Nigerians could be moved to a neighbouring country, the airline would fly there, and evacuate them without delay.”

 

This came as Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) condemned Nigerian authorities for delay in evacuating citizens trapped in Sudan. It warned that the Federal Government would be held responsible if harm comes to any Nigerian citizen, even as it faulted lack of real commitment to the evacuation.

 

A statement by its spokesperson, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, reads: “The CNG is extremely saddened and concerned by reports that about 4,000 Nigerians trapped in Sudan have not been evacuated. We are worried also by reports of the inhumane and exploitative treatment those who managed to arrive Cairo and Ethiopian boarders are subjected to, while the Nigerian government appears helpless.

 

“We find it disturbing that the Federal Government would fail, once again, in the statutory responsibility of protecting Nigerians at home and abroad. We are thus worried because a majority of the stranded Nigerians in Sudan are northern Nigerians, which, perhaps, explains the levity and condescension with which federal authorities are handling the situation.”

 

A vicious power struggle between the regular army and a powerful paramilitary force has triggered violence across Sudan in the last one week. It has led to a growing list of countries evacuating diplomats and citizens from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. The U.S. and UK announced on Sunday they had flown diplomats out of the country. France, Germany, Italy and Spain have also been evacuating diplomats and other nationals. Onyema said he is compelled to help with the evacuation, because Nigeria could not afford to lose her citizens in that country.

 

“More so, everything must not be left for the government alone, especially as the situation calls for urgency and immediate action. Air Peace is willing to evacuate the stranded Nigerians free of charge, if the government can get them to a safe and secure airport in any of the neighbouring countries bordering Sudan.

 

“It will be a privilege and honour of tremendous pride that we will be out there to give every Nigerian stranded in Sudan a sense of pride and oneness in their country. We are ready to do it immediately. No time to waste.

 

“If they are moved to Kenya or Uganda or any other country, we will move in to get them out. Some parents have started calling on us to help. We are ready to do this again,” he said.

 

In 2019, Air Peace deployed flights to evacuate Nigerians in South Africa, following xenophobic attacks against Africans living in that country. United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, yesterday, called on the UN’s most powerful body to pull Sudan back from the “edge of the abyss”.

 

In remarks to the Security Council, Guterres urged member states to exert maximum leverage with the parties to end the violence, restore order, and return to the path of the democratic transition.

 

He said: “We must all do everything within our power to pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss. The violence must stop. It risks a catastrophic conflagration within Sudan that could engulf the whole region and beyond.”

 

The UN chief said he was in constant contact with the “parties to the conflict” and called on them to de-escalate tensions and return to the negotiating table.

 

MEANWHILE, CNG, in its statement, said: “We wonder why the sense of emergency applied in evacuation of Nigerians from Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion is not extended to the situation in Sudan. It is otherwise curious why the Federal Government would allow innocent lives to be endangered in a foreign land while Egypt and Ethiopian authorities exploit their situation.

 

“A responsible and responsive government would, by now, have reached out to the authorities in Cairo and Addis Ababa to secure easy passage for the stranded Nigerians who have managed to arrive at their borders.”

 

The coalition demand action from the National Assembly, compelling the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Security Adviser and Nigeria’s representative in the African Union to ensure urgent and safe evacuation of Nigerians who are mainly northerners trapped in Khartoum, Ethiopia and Egypt. It added: “The CNG categorically condemns the deliberate insensitivity in handling of the situation of Nigerians in Sudan who are mostly of northern extraction.”