More than 5, 000 Nigerian citizens, on Wednesday, reportedly gathered at the Libyan Airport in Tripoli waiting to be airlifted back to Nigeria by the federal government.
According to sources in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, the citizens had converged from different corners of the crisis-torn city to await the federal government's evacuation efforts. The National Emergency Management Agency had, on Monday, evacuated 1, 243 Nigerians stranded in Tripoli. "About 170 Nigerians were taken hostage by the Libyan army and taken to their barracks this morning (Wednesday)," said a Nigerian resident in Tripoli, who identified himself as Okwudili, adding that the reasons for "taking them hostage" were unclear. "But they later moved them to the airport and they are among the more than 5, 000 people at the airport now," he said.
Appeal for evacuation
The Patriotic Citizen Initiatives, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on issues of desert migration and human trafficking, on Wednesday, appealed to the federal government to hasten its evacuation efforts of the stranded Nigerians. According to Osita Osemene, the organization's president, the government's efforts should go beyond those stranded in Tripoli and extend to citizens in other states in Libya. "There are a lot of people, women and children," he said. "As at the time I was compiling the list, a lot of people were lamenting, crying at the background that they want to come back, that the Nigerian government should help them." Mr Osemene, who said he had compiled a list, as at Wednesday, of about 722 citizens in the southern city of Sabha willing to make the journey back to Nigeria. "In Southern Libya, there is no war like you have in the upper part of Libya, but this quest to come back has been on even before this war," he said. "Libya is a transit route and everybody in Libya is stranded. All the Nigerians in Libya are stranded."
Korede Alabi, the Chairman of the Nigerian Union in Sabha, said that there are more than 5, 000 Nigerians in the city who are also willing to return home. "There is no crisis in Sabha, it's just that people are panicking," said Mr. Alabi, who spoke via telephone from Sabha. "Also, places like Gatron and Murzuq are also quiet, but people want to come back."
The Nigerian government, two weeks ago, ordered the federal ministry of foreign affairs to ensure that all Nigerians in Libya were moved out to protect their lives. The people evacuated on Monday brought the total number of evacuees since the crisis began, last month, to 1742. "We appreciate but we are begging them to do more because, maybe they are having constraints about the actual figure of Nigerians in Libya," said Mr Osemene. "And that's why we in this organization are working so hard for the government. We are appealing to (the) government, whatever they can do within their powers because I know government can do it, they have the resources and they are responsible for the citizens. It is their duty to make sure they help us out of crisis."
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