The Nigerian Federal Government has stated that Nigeria does not have enough isolation centres to keep the incredibly high number of Nigerians who have indicated interest in being evacuated.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Enyeama, during a daily briefing of the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 in Abuja.
According to him there is a very high number of willing returnees and there are no sufficient isolation centres to keep them for the mandatory 14 days.
Over 2,000 Nigerians in the United States, United Kingdom, China, United Arab Emirates and several other countries have registered to be evacuated.
Enyeama said:
“We have received all the numbers from our various embassies around the world. We are collating those numbers, then we have now selected two airlines that will be responsible for going to fetch them.
“The numbers are high and the places where we can isolate them are not enough for those numbers. So, we will have to do it in a target fashion.
“Together with the National Emergency Management Agency NEMA, NEMA, and the Ministry of Health, we will have to come to an agreement to be bringing them back according to the number of beds and other things that are available. But as I said, we have now identified the airlines and so we are almost ready to go.”
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