Some of the Nigerian students being evacuated from the war-torn city of Sudan are lamenting their ordeal as they were stopped in the middle of the desert by the bus drivers.
According to some of the students who shared their experiences on an online video shared by @diisa2002 on his twitter account, “The bus drivers said they are not moving their bus because they didn’t give them money.”
The student complained of going through a lot of ordeals before they embarked on the journey, and were not happy that their government would expose them to such risk of being stranded in a desert where they could not even find water to cool their thirst.
“Before we started this journey, we had to go on several fights; can you imagine, now we have been in this place for over five hours.
We are stuck in the desert, we don’t even know where we are and we don’t have a compass to even know our location.
We don’t have water, we don’t have money, everything has finished, why is Nigeria treating us this way?” she said.
Read also: Sudan: First set of Nigerian evacuees arrive Friday ; Dabiri-Erewa
Many Nigerians have however condemned the development which they ascribed as bad governance.
Annie prayed that the students get back to the country safe, insisting that bad governance knows no tribe nor religion. “Bad governance knows no tribe or religion.”
Someone else was worried that the bus drivers might have gotten wind of how much was approved for the journey, and compared it to how much they were paid. Hence, the anger and sudden resolution to stop on the way.
However, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission has said through her Twitter handle @abikedabiri that the issues between the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the transport company have been resolved, as they have started moving.
“They have started moving and the issues between NEMA and the transport company have been resolved,” she tweeted.
The evacuation of 2,400 Nigerian students and other citizens trapped in the ongoing conflict in Sudan started on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 with only 15 out of the 40 buses promised by the federal government for the exercise being made available.
