The Civil Liberties Organisation on Tuesday called on the Federal Government to take urgent steps to evacuate Nigerians trapped in China and other parts of the world.
In its letter to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), on Tuesday signed by its Executive Director, Ibuchukwu Ezike, the CLO’s stated that over 300 Nigerians, who travelled to China for business activities before the coronavirus pandemic, had been trapped and had cried out to the organisation for help.
The letter read, “In several distress phone communications to the CLO on Monday night, the Nigerians said that they had been disallowed to return to Nigeria after they had completed their business activities in China”.
They said they had been subjected to various inhuman and degrading treatments including repeated tests, being quarantined in hotels, denial of access to Nigerian foods and serial taking away of their colleagues from their hotel rooms to unknown places.
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“The Nigerians prayed the CLO to appeal to President Muhammad Buhari and the United Nations to come to their aid and save them from avoidable hardship and death”.
“They said the Nigerian Embassy in China had failed woefully to intervene in their interest.”
However, CLO findings indicate that other countries of the world are sending chartered flights to evacuate their nationals from China.
Some of the countries include but not limited to Canada which has evacuated 137 citizens and the United States of America which had evacuated 392 of their people in that country.
Similarly, smaller African countries like Ghana, Benin Republic and Togo have sent aircrafts to take away their citizens from China to their respective countries.
Also, stranded Nigerians complain that the worst scenario is that while other countries of the world have not closed their borders against their returning citizens, Nigeria has blocked her borders against Nigerian returnees to their country.
The organisation appealed to the President to ask the Chinese Government to allow Nigerians to return without further delay.
