• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Covid-19: FG evacuates 69 Nigerians stranded in Lebanon

Geoffrey Onyeama

The Federal Government has repatriated 69 Nigerians stranded in Lebanon as efforts to evacuate more Nigerians intensifies following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama made this known in his Twitter handle @GeoffreyOnyeama late Sunday.

He said “With the successful and logistic support of the Lebanese Government and the Lebanese community in Nigeria, 50 trafficked Nigerian girls and 19 stranded Nigerians were successfully evacuated from Lebanon and arrived Nigeria today.”

The Minister also expressed gratitude to the Lebanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Houssam Diad and the Nigerian Ambassador to Lebanon, Goni Zannabura for their efforts to ensure smooth evacuation of the Nigerians.

Nigeria has so far repatriated about 1,000 of the nearly 4,000 of  its citizens abroad willing to return home since the outbreak of the Coronavirus.  Last week the Federal Government received 292 evacuees stranded in Saudi Arabia. A large number of them were nursing mothers and children and they are all comfortably settled in hotels under the mandatory 14 days of quarantine, according to the minister.

The Federal Government had earlier repatriated about 600 Nigerians from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (US) in the first, second and third batches of the evacuation respectively.