From Tuesday, December 14, the federal government has announced that airlines flying into Nigeria from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia will be restricted.
Hadi Sirika, Lagos’s minister of aviation, said this on Sunday.
Sirika claimed that it was in retaliation for Nigeria’s travel ban imposed over the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron.
According to Sirika, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration will also put the United Kingdom, Canada, and Saudi Arabia on a no-fly list because of the Omicron variant’s breakout and expansion.
Following the cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant reported in Nigeria, the United Kingdom announced that non-UK and non-Irish citizens traveling in from Nigeria would not be allowed admission.
Because of the rising number of omicron variant cases, Saudi Arabia had also imposed a temporary embargo on flights from Nigeria.
Canada, for its part, has imposed travel restrictions on Nigeria and nine other African nations due to omicron variant concerns.
According to NAN, the minister stated that if those nations put Nigeria on a blacklist, they have no moral right to have their airlines fly into Nigeria on commercial flights.
Saudi Arabia, for example, has placed Nigeria on a no-fly list. “On Sunday, I attended a meeting with the COVID-19 task force,” the minister was quoted as saying by NAN.
“We have given our input that it is not acceptable by us, and we recommended that those 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 the Nigerian government’s decision was in the interest of the country.
