The Aliko Dangote Foundation's Board of Trustees has decided to actively participate in the evacuation and resettlement of the thousands of Nigerians who are now stuck in Sudan.
Air Peace and the Federal Government management have been contacted by Zouera Youssoufou, MD/CEO of the Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF), to let them know the Foundation is prepared to assist the stranded Nigerians.
She said: “The Foundation will collaborate with the Federal Government and Air Peace in ensuring seamless transportation of the stranded Nigerians and more importantly provide logistics and succor to the evacuees, to make them settle more comfortably when they return to Nigeria.”
The Foundation MD
The Foundation MD went on to say that ADF understands the difficulties that the Federal Government and Air Peace are facing in carrying out this mission and that it has contacted the appropriate Federal Government agencies that are involved in humanitarian disaster relief intervention to "…indicate our interest in collaborating with them to ensure that all Nigerians stranded in Sudan are brought back home safely."
It should be recalled that the Aliko Dangote Foundation provided logistics assistance to the Nigerian government in 2015 for the Nigerian volunteer health professionals who assisted in the Ebola containment efforts in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
ADF assisting Nigerians...
Additionally, ADF provided support for the recent Covid pandemic by providing specially chartered flights, Covid testing, and quarantining once Nigerians returned from India and Dubai.
ADF has sponsored several thousand internally displaced people (IDPs) since 2011 in Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, and Abuja, spending more than 25 billion naira on food, shelter, and medical care.
In the meantime, a joint press release from the federal ministries of humanitarian affairs, disaster management, and social development revealed that the first batch of 13 buses carrying 637 evacuees had reached the designated safe borders in Aswan, Egypt.