China has evacuated 325 of its citizens from Nigeria via an Air Peace flight headed for Shanghai.
The plane was scheduled to depart at 10:05 pm on Thursday.
It is however unconfirmed whether Chinese medics who came into the country on April 8 are among those who returned to China.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has suspended further evacuation of Nigerians stranded abroad because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Geoffrey Onyeama, minister of foreign affairs, who announced this during COVID-19 presidential task force briefing on Wednesday, however, said the process is expected to continue soon.
He said the evacuation was suspended to give room for new measures that would require citizens returning to get tested and self-isolate at home rather than in selected hotels.
Onyeama noted that;
There is going to be a change in previous protocol of evacuation and that is going to affect the timing of any further evacuation we are going to undertake.
Anybody that is going to be evacuated will first of all undergo a test from the countries they are leaving from, at least five days before travel and not later than nine days before.
As at press time, over 900 Nigerians have been successfully evacuated from United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Saudi Arabia.
Similarly, the United States of America has evacuated 270 of her citizens from Nigeria earlier this month.
The evacuation was announced by the U.S. Mission in Nigeria on Twitter on Wednesday, May 6
France, Lebanon and the UK, are also among countries that have evacuated their nationals from Nigeria since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As at May 28, Nigeria has confirmed 8,915 cases of the novel coronavirus with 259 deaths.
