Humanitarian corridor to evacuate Nigerian students in Sumy begins on Monday

The Ukrainian Government has announced that it has approved the humanitarian corridor and authorized the evacuation of Nigerian students from Sumy, Northeast Ukraine, as evacuation is expected to start today

This was disclosed in a statement by the Nigerian Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama on his verified Twitter handle on Sunday evening.

This comes as a host of African and Indian students have been stuck in the North-Eastern City as fighting rages on.

Onyeama stated: “With deep gratitude to Dmytro Kuleba Foreign Minister of Ukraine for approval given, as promised, to establish humanitarian corridor and authorize evacuation of Nigerian students from Sumy starting tomorrow”.

He added that The big challenge is procuring buses, adding that the FG is doing everything to make it happen, citing a Great commitment by Nigerian Ambassador to Ukraine, Shina Alege.

On Saturday, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister had revealed that the Ukrainian Government indicated the procedure to follow in respect of the evacuation of Nigerian students in Sumy, which has been communicated to our Ambassador to Ukraine for action.

However, in a series of interviews with Nigerian students in Sumy on live TV programmes Tribune online gathered that students were trapped in the city because the roads and rail leading out of the Northeastern city were bombed.

A student identified as Daniel said: “those who found a way to leave, had to return to Sumy”, he added that the students are running out of supplies of food and water, and also electricity has been hanging on a thread as reports of bombings close to its power plants.

On the evacuations and humanitarian corridor, Daniel said “procuring vehicles seems to be the problem, because students have taken matters into their hands”.

He also revealed that students are paying as much as $250 per person to move to the next state where the train is still functional, “some students paid $2000 to get to Uzhorod so that they can get to the border there”

Daniel said his hope is shaking due to the fact that the evacuation that was scheduled to start by 9 am Ukrainian time is yet to commence as at 2 minutes he’s granting the live interview on the live TV show on Monday.

Meanwhile, the Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Buba said the Nigerian government is trying to schedule a safe corridor for the evacuation of Nigerian students trapped in Sumy.

Buba said concerned authorities are trying to complete a tripartite agreement with Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations for the safe evacuation as he added that two to three hours would not be too late to add to the originally planned time.