The
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, has said that the federal
government spent $1 million to evacuate Nigerians who were stranded in Russia
after the 2018 FIFA World Cup tournament.
The first batch of 155 stranded
Nigerians arrived the country on July 20, while the last batch of 200, arrived
Nigeria on Sunday, August 5.
Onyeama told journalists on Monday in
Abuja that $500,000 was spent to charter each of the two planes that airlifted
the stranded football fans.
“About 200 of them were brought
back yesterday (Sunday) at a cost of one million US dollars to the country.
$500,000 to charter the first plane and another $500,000 for the second,” he
said.
That same plane also brought back 17
Ghanaians, who were then transported to their country, the minister said,
adding that the gesture, again, demonstrated Nigeria’s big brother role in
Africa.
The minister, however, expressed
concern that large number of Nigerians travelled to Russia not to watch the
world cup but went there for other purposes.
“They ostensibly went to Russia as
football fans to watch the world cup but unfortunately, large number of them
did not go there to watch football at all,” he said.
He said the cost of evacuation was “a
lot of money” at a time the country is battling with the challenge of scarce
resources.
“We have to try and stop this
continuous wave of Nigerians trying at all cost to get to European countries in
an irregular manner,” he added.
The stranded football fans had
claimed that travel agents cancelled their return tickets.
Onyeama said he had directed Nigerian
Ambassador in Russia to collect all the tickets and make them available to the
ministry
“We will take the matter up with the
travel agents and get to the bottom of it,” he said.
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