A two-man delegation of the House of Representatives left Abuja last week to observe the evacuation of Nigerians caught up in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The delegation comprising House Leader, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa and Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee, Buba Yakub, was sent on the trip by the Green chamber following a motion on the House floor about the plight of Nigerians fleeing Ukraine amidst Russia’s assault.
Russia had launched her invasion of Ukraine penultimate Thursday, leaving many Nigerians along with other foreign nationals and Ukrainians themselves heading to neighbouring Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania in a scramble for safety. President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, last week, approved $8.5million for immediate evacuation of some 5,000 Nigerians stranded as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian hostility – same day that chartered flights operated by Air Peace and Max Air left Nigeria to begin hauling back the evacuees from those countries neighbouring Ukraine. The House delegation, however, did not await those chartered flights and travelled out of this country on a Turkish Airlines flight. Its arrival in Romania was reported in the media.
Meanwhile, Nigeria had an operational team on ground in the Ukrainian border regions led by the Director, Consular and Legal Services in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bolaji Akinremi, and involving ambassadors to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries along with their staff to execute the evacuation operations. When there was a hitch in the evacuation schedule warranting a 24-hour delay in the return of evacuees to Nigeria, it fell on this team to provide explanation and rejig the plan to get the affected Nigerians back home. Rather than last Thursday as earlier scheduled, the first batch of evacuees arrived in Abuja by 7:11a.m. on Friday, while another batch came in on Friday evening. In Abuja, the evacuees were received at the airport by officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
Legislative sensitivity to the plight of Nigerian nationals caught up in the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a positive thing and the House must be commended for this. But the value addition in a House delegation going all the way to observe the evacuation operations in Ukraine’s border regions is highly debatable. For instance, what exactly was the role of the delegation in the evacuation operations beyond passive sight-seeing, and did this justify the expenditure of public funds on the travel expenses including air fares, estacodes, lodging and other conveniences of the honourable members? The spuriousness of the trip showed forth in the fact that delegation members shunned the chartered flights dispatched from Nigeria in preference for a foreign commercial flight, and that their presence made no difference to the one-day delay in the evacuation schedule. With due respect to the House, the trip smacked strongly of a junket.