SIXTY Nigerians are trapped in Chinese city Wuhan, the epic centre of the coronavirus outbreak, it was announced on Monday.
They are making a passionate appeal to the Nigerian Embassy in China and the Nigerian Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) to evacuate them
According to them, their request for the embassy to send face masks and other protective items has not received a positive response.
Many countries have evacuated their citizens since the virus broke out late last year in the city.
No cure has been found for the disease which has killed 361 people
Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr Zhou Pingjian, who confirmed that 60 Nigerians, including a man on a visit and a sick student, said no Nigerian in China had contracted the disease.
The plea by the trapped Nigerians and Pingjian’s confirmation contradict Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed’s on their figure and safety.
Mohammed last week told reporters in Abuja that “16 Nigerians in Wuhan had not indicated their interest to come home.”
About 362 lives have been lost out of the 17,205 confirmed and 21, 558 suspected cases so far.
Two of the trapped Nigerians, who spoke with TheCable, an online news portal on Monday, said they were ready to return home because things could get worse in China.
One of them said: “When this virus broke out, the Nigerian embassy in China contacted us and asked us to form a group on WeChat (a multipurpose messaging social media app) where all Nigerians who are in Wuhan could communicate on the latest development.”
“We told them that none of us had contracted the virus but we were worried and needed to be evacuated. But they told us to exercise patience since no country had evacuated their citizens because of the outbreak.
“We then asked them to provide us with face masks and some items that we could use, especially those of us who have children.
“Purchasing items have been difficult since the outbreak of this epidemic. The masks are no longer available in stores that open briefly on a daily basis and if you go online, they are very expensive.
“We are more than 57 Nigerians in Wuhan and government has banned public movement without masks. We expected the embassy to assist us with this but nothing of such happened.”
The businessman, who did not want his name in print, also claimed that all efforts by them to reach the Nigerian Ambassador to China, Ahmad Jidda and an official of the embassy in Beijing, Bakori Usman, who contacted them in the early days of the outbreak, ended in futility.
Another trapped Nigerian in Wuhan accused the embassy of not handling the situation properly.
He said that many countries had started evacuating their citizens.
His words: “The situation is getting out of hand. There is a Nigerian here who just came on a visit; he was about returning home when the virus broke out. Now he is trapped. There is a student who was sick and was finding it difficult to get adequate treatment here.
“Plans were being made to move him out of China before this issue of coronavirus outbreak; now he is also trapped. There are people with children here, how does the government expect them to cope when the city is virtually on lock down?
“We are stranded here. The Federal Government should please rescue us… shops are closed and banks shut. We find it difficult to get the things we need. We don’t know how long this situation will continue.”
Culled: The Nation
