Drivers evacuating Nigerians, mostly students from Sudan, have halted the journey over the failure of President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime to pay them, OsunDaily just learnt.
It was gathered that the students who are escaping the unrest in the troubled country are now trapped in the desert before getting to Egypt.
The Gazette obtained a video clip on Thursday showing some of the stranded students – revealing that the drivers of the luxury buses have vowed not to continue the journey if they are not paid by Mr Buhari’s regime.
“Can you believe that we have been stuck in this desert for 5 hours? We don’t have water…our money has finished. Can you imagine? The drivers said they are not moving their buses because they are not been paid.
“We are stuck in the desert. And before we started this journey, we experience different things. We are in unknown location and a very big danger. We don’t have anything,” a female student was seen raising her voice in the one-minute video clip.
Also, in an audio file, another student was heard saying their location in the desert was almost 1,000 km from the capital, claiming their present location has poor mobile phone coverage.
On Wednesday, Mr Buhari’s regime claimed it spent $1.2 million to deploy vehicles to evacuate Nigerian citizens currently stranded in Sudan.
The regime said the fund, amounting to N560 million in Nigeria currency, was spent on 40 luxury buses to move at least 2,400 Nigerian citizens out of the crisis-ridden country by road to safe places where they can be flown home.
Geoffrey Onyeama, Minister of Foreign Affairs, revealed this at the week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by Mr Buhari, at the Council Chambers of Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
Mr Onyeama said the high cost of the evacuation was to provide security cover for the eight-hour journey from Luxol to Cairo and the eleven-hour trip from Aswan to Cairo, Egypt.
The Minister explained that talks were also ongoing about alternative plans for continued education especially for the students among the evacuees.
According to Mr Onyeama, once the stranded students were safely moved to Egypt, other arrangements would be effected to airlift them back to Nigeria.
He, however, added that no Nigerian had died in the fight between the rival forces in the violent-prone country.
Also speaking, the Minister of State, Foreign Affairs, Zubairu Dada, said the regime was confident that no citizen of Nigerian being evacuated would die as the journey to leave Sudan begins.
“We are confident we shall not lose any life in this exercise to evacuate stranded Nigerians,” Mr Dada added.
He revealed that the Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and staff of the Nigerian commission in Egypt and Ethiopia are currently on the ground at the Egyptian border in Aswan to receive those already evacuated from Sudan.
The junior minister explained that the Buhari regime was leveraging on the 72 hours cease-fire window given by the Sudanese government to evacuate as many Nigerians as possible.
“So, women and children would be given priority before diplomats who were equally involved in the evacuation logistics,” Mr Dada further noted.
