Before withdrawing Nigerian students from Sudan, the Federal Government claims it is awaiting assurance from the Sudanese Government.
Remember that the continuing regional conflict has left nearly 4000 Nigerians stuck 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.
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He claimed that in a perilous circumstance, the Federal Government does not wish to remove Nigerian citizens.
According to Onyeama, the government was attempting to obtain permission from the government so that it could evacuate Nigerians from the area in 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.
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“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 Sudan”, he stated.
Infighting between two Generals on April 16, 2023, led to the start of the Sudanese crisis.
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A serious 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.
When gunmen opened fire on a French convoy on Sunday while it was fleeing, one French national was reportedly shot.
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