Nigeria’s federal government has delayed the evacuation of Nationals fleeing the Russia-Ukraine crisis till Friday, 4th March, 2022.
The arrival of the first batch of the flights from Poland, Romania and Hungary aboard Air Peace and Max Air, was earlier scheduled to arrive Abuja on Thursday, March 3.
The leader of the Nigerian Delegation and Director, Consular and Legal Services, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bolaji Akinremi, said the reality was that the flight has been rescheduled till Friday.
Akinremi disclosed that the main reason was due to the delay in carrying out the checking in of the passengers.
He said: “They have to gather them together from different hotels and by the time we will be ready after the checking in, the crew that have been waiting since 9am, and have over short the hour they should have waited because they have a duty hour which is allocated to them and they have waited from 9am to 2pm, that means they have already waited for five hours and they are going to have nine hours flight. That is already more than the standard. So, the authority of the airport said they won’t allow us to board. So, this is the reality and then, we have to come down.”
Akinremi further said arrangements had been made to ensure that they all stay together in the same hotel and leave the hotel very early at 4am in buses to join the flight.
On his part, the Nigerian Ambassador to Poland, Christian Ugwu, said it was difficult gathering the Nigerian nationals to embark on the trip.
Ugwu said: “I know the characters of Nigerians and one needs to be hard on them. You have to work hard to gather them together, especially young people, exuberant.
“Even here, some of them at the airport were arrested. One of them was arrested for moving about. So, these are the problems we encountered, but I am very sure by tomorrow morning, the flight will take off.”
