The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, made this known at the end of the Federal Executive Council while giving an update on the situation in warring Sudan as regards the evacuation of Nigerian citizens.

Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, a human rights activist and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, has slammed the government,

He berated President Muhammadu Buhari-led Nigerian government for spending the sum of $1.2 million to hire buses to transport stranded citizens from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital to Egypt.

SaharaReporters on Wednesday reported that the Nigerian government said it was spending the sum of $1.2 million to hire buses to transport stranded citizens from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital to Egypt, from where they would be airlifted to Nigeria.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, made this known at the end of the Federal Executive Council while giving an update on the situation in warring Sudan as regards the evacuation of Nigerian citizens.

Onyeama had said, “You recall that the main challenge we had was, first of all, securing the authorisation of the Sudanese government and then security support for the convoy. This is because it has been decided that we will transport or convey Nigerian to the Egyptian border Aswan.

“We are liaising with our embassy in Egypt as well so we have been able to overcome these challenges and we have started the process which we are very happy about. $1.2 million is what we’re being charged for all the 40 buses.”

But reacting to the government’s claim, Odinkalu said the Nigerian government under the All Progressives Congress (APC) uses every tragedy as an opportunity to loot and plunder public funds.

“Every tragedy for this lot in the regime of @OfficialAPCNg is an opportunity to #LootAndPlunder,” he said.

SaharaReporters on Wednesday also reported details of how President Buhari’s government spent about N1.5 billion to evacuate Nigerian nationals across Europe back to the country during the Russia-Ukraine war.

The details of the spending were contained in a response to the Freedom of Information (FOI) letter written by a civic group, Global Coalition for Security and Democracy in Nigeria to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), asking the agency to explain how it spent the approved $8.5 million budget for the immediate evacuation of about 5,000 Nigerians stranded in Poland, Romania and Hungary when the Russia-Ukraine war started.