Doing away with the Federal government’s sluggishness, the Kaduna State Government has commenced independent evacuation of its students on scholarship in war-torn Sudan.
The development was contained in a press statement issued by the Secretary of the State Scholarship and Loans Board, Hassan Rilwan on Sunday.
The statement read in part, “Kaduna State has evacuated all its scholarship beneficiaries in Sudan and has also commenced the evacuation of all Kaduna State students.
“This is following the intense war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces and recent agreement to implement a nationwide ceasefire starting at midnight on April 24, to last for 72 hours.”
Recall that the Federal Government on Sunday gave a breakdown of the $1.2m spent on the bus fare to evacuate stranded Nigerians from war-torn Sudan to Egypt’s borders for onward airlifting to Nigeria.
The Permanent Secretary of the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry and Chair of the Situation Room on the evacuation of Nigerians from Sudan, Nasir Sani-Gwarzo, gave the explanation after a closed-door meeting of the ministry in Abuja.
He made it known that $30,000 was paid per bus and that 40 buses were procured for the proper evacuation of Nigerian citizens stranded in Sudan.
He also explained the delays experienced by Nigerians at the Egyptian borders, delays on payment caused by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the requests for visa payments by the Egyptian government.
According to him, the owners of the buses demanded complete payment, noting that the sending money to Sudan cannot be done directly but through middlemen. He quickly added that the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) have been carried along in the payment process.
