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Chinelo Obogo
The Federal government has evacuated 315 more Nigerians – 290 adults and 25 infants – from South Africa, bringing the total number of returnees to 502.
Air Peace flight APK 7818, Boeing 777 aircraft with registration 5N-BWI, touched down at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) at 7.22pm local time with Nigerians evacuated from South Africa following xenophobic attacks
The flight took off at 1:50pm local time from the OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg and arrived Nigeria at 7.22pm.
The returnees were received by the chairman of Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri and the chairman of Air Peace, Allen Onyema.
The South African government initially denied Air Peace the rights to land at the OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, but later gave the airline permit to evacuate the second batch of Nigerians.
Nigeria’s Consul-General in Johannesburg, Godwin Adama, said the permit was granted after Onyema raised the alarm that South African authorities had not granted landing permit to Air Peace Flight B777 to enable it to evacuate more Nigerians.
On arrival, the Special Assistant on Diaspora, to Governor Babajide Sanwo-olu, Jamil Sanwo-olu, gave each returnee the sum of N20,000 to enable them to travel to their different states of origin. He said the state government would do everything within its power to ensure that they got the necessary support to be reintegrated into the society.
Speaking with our correspondent, some of the returnees, Mr. Kennedy Peters and Mrs Comfor Akpan, expressed gratitude to the Federal government and Air Peace for the gesture. They, however, said that the apologies rendered to Nigerian government by the South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was insincere, as the South African immigration was allegedly still very hostile to them even on the day of their departure.
