With effect from Tuesday December 14, the Federal Government will restrict airlines coming from United Kingdom, Canada, and Saudi Arabia into Nigeria.
Minister of Aviation, Capt. Hadi Sirika, announced the decision on Sunday in Lagos and explained that it was to reciprocate restricted flights from Nigeria into those countries over the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron.
Sirika said President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration would also place the United Kingdom, Canada and Saudi Arabia on a red list over the outbreak and spread of the Omicron variant.
The minister noted that if those countries placed Nigeria on a red list, they lacked a moral right to have their airlines fly into Nigeria on commercial operations.
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The minister said:
There is also the case of Saudi Arabia that put Nigeria on the ban list. On Sunday, I participated in a meeting with the COVID-19 task force.
We have given our input that it is not acceptable by us and we recommended that Canada, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Argentina also be put on the red list.
As they did to us, if they do not allow our citizens into their countries; who are they coming, as airlines, to pick from our country?
They are not supposed to come in. I am very sure in the next three days, Monday or Tuesday, all those countries will be put on the red list of COVID-19.
He stressed that airlines of the affected countries remained banned and the countries placed on Nigeria’s red list.
Sirika apologised to Nigerians intending to travel to those countries, but said Nigerian government’s decision was in the interest of the country.
The Director General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Willie Walsh, recently said that it was not in any country’s interest to keep imposing travel restrictions.
Walsh said that after nearly two years with COVID-19, the operators know a lot about the virus and the inability of travel restrictions to control its spread.
But the discovery of the Omicron variant induced instant amnesia on governments, which implemented knee-jerk restrictions in complete contravention of advice from the WHO- the global expert.
