President, Muhammadu Buhari has approved funds for airlines to evacuate Nigerians.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, disclosed this in an interview earlier yesterday.
He said there were about 8,000 Nigerians in Ukraine, 5,000 of whom were students, adding that the Federal Government had tipped Air Peace and Air Max to airlift the Nigerians who wanted to be evacuated.
Earlier, Onyeama while briefing the House of Representatives on the evacuation efforts, stated they made Romania the hub and over a thousand Nigerians have crossed there. He said that Poland has about 250, Budapest in Hungary has a similar number while Slovakia is rising rapidly with around 200 people. He also said there are some Nigerians in a place called Sumy close to the Russian border.
Onyeama also argued that it was not the sole duty of the Federal Government to evacuate Nigerians that were stranded abroad because this was not the global practice. He said people who use their own money to travel abroad ought to be able to return home by themselves.
Onyeama disclosed that family members of Nigerians diplomats in Ukraine had been taken out of the country, adding that the diplomats would also be evacuated soon.
He also stated that about four to five aircraft had been secured to airlift Nigerians from the Ukrainian neighbours from Wednesday.
On why the Nigerian government was not proactive like the United States which had advised its citizens to leave Ukraine over a week before the Russian invasion, Onyeama said the Nigerian diplomats in Ukraine were the ones that assured the Nigerian government that Russia would not invade, as most world leaders had thought.
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