By MOHAMMED MOMOH

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Nigeria has begun the evacuation of its stranded citizens in Khartoum, Sudan with the deployment of 40 luxury buses to take the evacuees to Egypt for airlifting to the West African country.

In a series of tweets by the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (Nidcom), the exercise started on Wednesday with the transportation of about 500 students.

Nidcom also shared a video showing buses parked in line and pictures of people in queues which it captioned "at the registration point this morning".

“Last night, the Nigeria evacuation team in Sudan received some buses to transport Nigerian students to nearby Egyptian border in Aswan, before airlifting them to Nigeria. This has been sorted by the country’s government through its embassy in Sudan,” Nidcom tweeted.

Read: S.Sudan receives 10,000 civilians fleeing Sudan

Headed by Mrs Abike-Dabiri Erewa, Nidcom added that more buses would be provided to carry the students.

The evacuation was initially scheduled to start on Tuesday but did not happen because buses were unable to secure passes to move.

Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved $1.2 million for the immediate evacuation.

The country’s Foreign Affairs Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, after the meeting of FEC, said that the amount would be spent on the hiring of luxury buses that would transport the stranded students from Khartoum to Egypt from where they will be airlifted.

“Of course you know, because of the risks involved and so many other things, a lot of people are going to also take advantage. We saw the French convoy being attacked. It was difficult procuring these buses. But we had to do it because you know, Nigerian lives matter.”

Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister Zubairu Dada also reported that no Nigerian has been killed in Sudan since the conflict broke out on April 15.

“The evacuation is being done in batches to ensure the safety of all Nigerians. But the good news is that no Nigerian life has been lost so far and we’re very confident that we shall not lose any life in this exercise. All is well and we’re good to go,” he said.

“The Nigerian government has also arranged for security support for the students to the Egyptian border,” Dada added.

Evacuation efforts intensified

Every effort to evacuate as many Nigerians as possible during the 72-hour window provided by the Sudanese government has been intensified.

“We have no problem about the 72-hour window because we’ve talked to all the authorities concerned and we’re on the same page. But talking about the window, we are making every effort to ensure that we make use of this window to evaluate as many Nigerians as we possibly can.”

He also disclosed that some Nigerians had already been evacuated by ship by the government of Saudi Arabia.

Read: Thousands flee battle-scarred Khartoum

“Some Nigerians have actually been evacuated by ship from Port Sudan by the government of Saudi Arabia. This is a joint effort and we’ll link up and find a way of bringing them back home from Jeddah,” he said.

There are about 5,500 Nigerians waiting to be evacuated from Sudan. Between 2,600 and 2,800 Nigerians were expected to have been evacuated by Wednesday.