The Federal Government has regretted the delay in the evacuation of Nigerians willing to return home from India, China and other parts of the world following the Coronavirus pandemic, even as it assured that a new private sector -driven mechanism is being put in to bring them home as soon as possible.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama made this known on Tuesday while fielding questions during the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on the containment of Covid-19 in Abuja. He added that a new protocol spearheaded by business mogul Aliko Dangote and others in the private sector no longer requires the use of hotels as isolation centers because of the burden it imposes on the evacuees.
The government, he said, had tried to reschedule dates for the evacuation of Nigerians from India, China and various countries around the end of May but some unforeseen challenges hindered that process.
“In respect of evacuees in India who were no longer able to come back, essentially what happened was that there is a new protocol which is an initiative of the private sector spearheaded by Aliko Dangote, and one of the real benefits of that is that there will no longer be the need of quarantine in hotels, the cost that comes with that and also the burden on the evacuees themselves. This is a major initiative for which we are eternally grateful to Dangote and all the others in the private sector,” Onyeama said.
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He noted that two Nigerian air carriers were earlier booked to carry nationals of other countries in this case China and India within four days of each other returning them to their countries with the hope that they will on return bring back Nigerians but that did not go according to plan.
“So, we thought that we will be able to avoid the situation where these national carriers would come back empty without our national evacuees on them. With China we were able to do it for a number of reasons but unfortunately for India it just was not possible to do it within the time frame,” he said.
The minister, who offered profound apologies, said the government was in touch with all the actors in this process, the private sector people and the medical people to try to get this as quickly as possible so that the very problems that these evacuees are faced with will be mitigated as much as possible.
“I can only offer profound apologies for that situation and really hope that very soon the mechanism will be up and running and as soon as possible and we will be able to bring our compatriots in India back as quickly as possible.
“So, with the new mechanism that was brought into force, there is a requirement of testing five days before boarding, so we spoke to those members of the private sector who were behind this initiative and the feedback was that it would be possible to push the dates back by a number of days and they will be able to be up and running,” he said.
So far, Nigeria has repatriated over 1,000 of the estimated 4,000 Nigerians that have indicated interest to come back home following the Covid-19. Nigerians have returned from United Arab Emirates (UAE), United Kingdom (UK), United States (US) Lebanon, China and Saudi Arabia.
On the much reported samples of the alleged drug for the Covid -19 from Madagascar that were brought to Nigeria, Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire, said the samples have been distributed to research institutes in Nigeria for testing.
“Nigerian Institute for Medical Research got some samples, the Nigerian Institute for Pharmaceutical Research got samples, NAFDAC got samples and then the Ministry of Science and Technology got sample,” Ehanire said.
He noted that the time line for delivery is not something that one cannot give anybody in research because they have processes which they have to go through and they might not all report at the same time.
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