Annora Omolu, a Nigerian undergraduate at Kyiv Medical University, said she heard a small blast by the window of her apartment.
Confused and scared, she began to reach out to the Nigerian embassy in Ukraine for assistance. “Can they send us flights? Everybody is absolutely on his/her own,” she said.
Nigerian student unions in Ukraine said they made several calls to the Nigerian embassy in Kyiv without getting a response.
“There has been no embassy response,’’ Anjola Ero-Phillips, President of the Nigerian Students Union in Lviv, told Al Jazeera. “All they say is check the website and the last update on the website is January 26. Everybody is absolutely on their own,’’ he added.
The House of Representatives had called on the Federal Government to immediately begin the evacuation of Nigerian students. The lower chamber also pleaded with Nigerian airline, Air Peace, to assist with the evacuation.
However, human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), lambasted the House of Representatives for calling on Air Peace to evacuate Nigerians.
Falana told Saturday PUNCH that it was not the job of a private organisation to evacuate Nigerians but the primary responsibility of the government to coordinate such.
Falana said, “Air Peace is a private business, so the National Assembly has no business asking Air Peace to evacuate students. Will the government pay? Will the National Assembly appropriate money for it instead of appealing to Air Peace?
“It is the government that should spend money on rescuing stranded Nigerians, not a private airline. Unfortunately, this is one of the prices we have to pay for our dysfunctional educational system. The government is not fixing things. Hence we have been witnessing exodus.”
Act now, Aisha Buhari tells FG
The wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, on Friday backed the call by the National Assembly and appealed to the Foreign Affairs Ministry to handle the situation as quick as possible.
“The Minister of Foreign Affairs should treat this matter as an emergency, while our citizens should stay calm, comply with safety procedures and avoid self-help in order to avoid the mischief of human traffickers,” Mrs Buhari said.
