By Victoria Ojeme, and Ezra Ukanwa, Abuja

The Federal Government has said an Air Peace charter flight scheduled to evacuate Nigerians fleeing Ukraine from Poland on Thursday has been postponed.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, Bolaji Akinremi, disclosed that the flight was postponed to tomorrow being Friday, 4th March, 2022, due to a delay in preparing passengers for the check-in process.

He said: “the reality is that the flight has been rescheduled to tomorrow the main reason is the delay in doing the checking because they have to gather them together from different hotel.

“By the time we will be ready after the checking in, the crew that have been waiting for us since 9am have over shot the hour they should have waited because they have a duty hour which has been allocated to them and they had waited from 9am till 2pm that means they have already waited 5hours.

“They are going to have 9hours flight that is already more than the standard, so the authority of the airport said they won’t allow us to board. This is the reality, we have to calm down but arrangement have been made that we all stay together in the same hotel and that we will leave very early tomorrow 4am we will be in the bus and then we can join the flight”

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Meanwhile, the Federal Government had in a statement signed by Amb. Gabriel Aduda, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Wednesday, said it would commence the evacuation of stranded Nigerians who fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries, following the conflict between the country and Russia.

He said: “Furtherance to our efforts to evacuate Nigerians from neighbouring countries surrounding Ukraine, we can confirm that chattered flights will depart on Wednesday, March 2, 2022, to pick up Nigerian evacuees home.

“So far, we have the following records of evacuees received by the Nigerian embassies at Hungary: 650 persons, Poland: 350 persons, Romania: 940 persons and Slovakia: 150 persons.

“The capacity and routes of the airlines are as follow: Max Air to Romania 560 persons, Air Peace to Poland 365 persons and Air Peace to Hungary 360 persons.

“The first batch of evacuees are expected to arrive Nigeria on Thursday, March 3, 2022.

“Once again, we assure Nigerians that we are working round the clock to see that our citizens are brought back home safely.

The permanent secretary further gave the following numbers; +2349160847498, +2347010882907, as consular helplines in case of any emergencies or inquiries.