Ukraine War: Max Air To Deploy First Plane To Airlift Nigerians On Wednesday
Max Air said it would commence the evacuation of Nigerians who were left stranded by the Russia-Ukraine war from Wednesday.
However, Air Peace said it has not started the evacuation process.
General Manager, Operations, Max Air, Raymond Omodiagbe, said the Federal Government had requested the airline to carry out the task and that the carrier was set to begin.
He said: “We have been assigned and we are on it. We’ve been airlifting pilgrims to Hajj and doing chartered operations for many years. So we are not new to this.
“So understand that we have been commissioned and we will depart Wednesday.”
Asked to state the number of flights or airplanes that would be deployed for the operation, Omodiagbe said: “We are doing it one at a time.”
The Federal Government had on Monday said it would on Wednesday begin the evacuation of about 2,000 Nigerians who have fled the war in Ukraine to neighbouring countries.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, who disclosed this in an interview on a Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme, revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari had approved funds for the airlines to evacuate Nigerians.
When asked if the number of evacuees was about 2,000, and when the evacuation would take place, he said: “Wednesday hopefully…Air Peace and Max Air.”
He said there were about 8,000 Nigerians in Ukraine, 5,000 of whom were students, adding that the Federal Government had tipped Air Peace and Air Max to airlift the Nigerians who wanted to be evacuated.
Earlier, Onyeama while briefing the House of Representatives on the evacuation efforts, said: “We made Romania the hub and over a thousand Nigerians have crossed there. Poland has about 250, Budapest in Hungary has a similar number, Slovakia is rising rapidly. It is also around 200. There are some Nigerians in a place called Sumy close to the Russian border.
“I have been in touch with the ambassador. There are about 150 of them who are looking to cross into Russia and we have asked the ambassador in Russia to try and get a permit for them to transit to Russia and hopefully by Wednesday we will start deploying planes to start bringing the Nigerians.”
