COVID-19: 268 Nigerians return home from China

Two-hundred and sixty-eight Nigerians have returned to the country from China. They arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on Saturday, May 30, 2020. According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, all the returnees will be put on the 14-day quarantine stipulated by Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC).

The repatriation comes days after Onyeama announced that the ministry is developing new guidelines for citizens seeking to be evacuated. He explained that part of the new guidelines would require that intending evacuees must do a compulsory test for the COVID-19 at least five days to their departure.

Meanwhile, the minister had also that two flights from the United Kingdom will be coming into Nigeria to evacuate British citizens in the country. He, however, explained that it would not be possible to take advantage of the situation to evacuate Nigerian citizens in the UK.

“The situation with the flights now coming in is that the UK Government which is effectively chattering these planes… in the contract that they have with those companies, there are provisions not to carry anybody coming to Nigeria on that first leg, so their contract is only to carry passengers going from Nigeria to the United Kingdom.

So it would not be possible but furthermore, it also would not have been possible because the plan that we had was to use a Nigerian carrier to evacuate Nigerians from all the countries around the world where we have an evacuation operation unless it is absolutely impossible to do so,” Onyeama said. Speaking further about other developments, the minister affirmed that 69 Nigerian girls trafficked to Lebanon had been rescued and evacuated back to the country.