Flights carrying students and nationals fleeing Ukraine were delayed due to logistics issues encountered with gathering the passengers.
This was disclosed by Ambassador Bolaji Alade Akinremi, Director, Consular & Legal Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs during an interview with Arise News on Friday morning.
Akinremi however, added that the suspended flight is expected to leave Poland later.
Revealing that the flight has been rescheduled for tomorrow, Akinremi said that the flight had been delayed because of the delay in having everyone check-in.
He said, “Because they have to gather them together, from different hotels and by the time we would be ready after checking in. The crew that had been waiting since 9am had overshot the hour they should have waited because they have a duty hour which is allocated to them.
READ ALSO: First batch of Nigerians evacuated from Ukraine arrives Abuja
“And they had waited from 9 to 2pm, which means they already waited for 5 hours for a 9-hour flight.
“That is already more than standard, the airport authorities say they won’t allow us to board.”
Meanwhile, Nigerian Ambassador to Poland, Christian Ugwu, hinted that some of the students displayed signs of “youthful exuberance”, causing issues with airport authorities which also affected the delays.
He said, “You know the character of Nigerians and one needs to be hard on them. You have to work hard to gather those together, especially young people.
“Exuberance, even some of them at the airport were arrested, one of them was arrested for moving about, so these are the problems we encountered, but I am very sure, by tomorrow morning the flight will take off.”
The first batch of Nigerian evacuees who left Bucharest, Romania safely arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport in Abuja at 7:10 am.