Nigeria’s federal government has said the shabby treatment of Nigerians trying to flee from conflict zones in Ukraine by the country’s authorities has nothing to do with race.
A viral video shared by a twitter user, Nze @Nzekiev showed how Nigerians and other Africans were prevented by Ukrainian soldiers from boarding trains to Poland, an incident that generated widespread criticism, with many attributing it to racism.
However, reacting to the development, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, who met with the Speaker House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, on Monday to explain what the Buhari administration is doing about Nigerians stranded in Ukraine, said he was assured by the Eastern European country’s government that the alleged treatment had noting to do with race.
“The advice then was for Nigerians to stay put, but as soon as the air strike started, most people started advancing towards the borders and this caused huge backlog of people who were walking 37 kilometers to the Polish border,” he said.
“And when I started hearing stories of racism and discrimination, I called the Ukrainian Minister and he said it had nothing to do with race.”
The Minister disclosed that the federal government will begin to evacuate Nigerians stranded in the country from Wednesday.
He said that arrangements had been concluded to begin the evacuation of the citizens who have crossed into other countries as a result of the ongoing conflict, assuring that planes would be dispatched to those countries to begin the evacuation.
“We hope to start evacuation hopefully Wednesday… We are doing everything possible to ensure that come Wednesday, we will dispatch planes for evaluation,” he said.