‘No Light. No Water’: Nigerians in Sudan lament as they await evacuation
“Since Saturday, we’ve had no water. They destroyed the water supply company of the state. No light. If you have no food, there’s nothing you can do because you can’t even go outside,” Hamza said.
From Ameer Hamza’s home in Mujahideen, in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum, residents are petrified as the city of over five million people slides towards a civil war that has claimed more than 420 lives and forced several others to migrate to the Ethiopian border for safety.
Hamza, a medicine and surgery student at Al Qalam College for Health Science and Technology, is one of the Nigerian students studying in Sudan who have been left stranded since the power tussle between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), began on Saturday, April 15, 2023.
According to Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, over 5,000 Nigerians are stranded in the North African country, hoping to be evacuated.
“Since the situation began, we’ve not been okay. We’ve been hearing gunshots, and bombs near our houses in Khartoum state,” Hamza told a Neusroom correspondent.
Timeline of Sudan Crisis
Bordered by Chad to the west, Egypt to the north, Eritrea to the northeast, Ethiopia to the southeast, and South Sudan to the south, and the Red Sea, Sudan is Africa’s third-largest country with an area of 1.8 million square kilometers. Jointly governed by Britain and Egypt as a condominium in the early 1900s, Sudan gained independence on January 1, 1956, four years after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. But the country was soon to be faced with military coups and counter coups, a harsh reality of African nations at the time. With more than 10 coups and attempted coups since independence, Sudan has experienced political instability.
After a civil war which lasted for more than 20 years that saw South Sudan secede from the country in 2011, Sudan’s recent crisis began in 2018 when the government of Omar al-Bashir tripled the price of goods at a time when the country was suffering an acute shortage of foreign currency and inflation of 70 percent. After over 30 years in power, Al-Bashir was forced out of office on April 11, 2019, through a military coup led by his defense minister who also doubles as the country’s Vice President.
A Transitional Military Council was established shortly after the 2019 coup, but in 2021, the military joined forces with the RSF to oust the country’s transitional civilian leader Abdalla Hamdok. Formerly headed by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Inspector of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of RSF became his deputy, but he’s often regarded as the de facto real leader.
Fighting broke out on Saturday, April 15, 2023, in Khartoum between the RSF and the country’s army as the two generals struggle to gain control of the key economy as the nation hopes to transition into democratic rule.
Hamza said the fighting has intensified as the city’s water supply company has been destroyed, with occasional internet outages.
“No water because they destroy the water supplying company of the state, no light, and even food, if you have food, you can eat, if you don’t have, you have nothing to do because you can’t even go outside.”
FG’s Response to Nigerians in Sudan
Before the crisis began on Saturday, the World Food Program reported that one-third (15 million) of Sudan’s population of 46 million is acutely food-insecure. It is believed that fighting, if not abated, will increase food scarcity in the region.
Countries have begun to evacuate their citizens, with experts hinting that there is little hope for a truce between the two military commanders. The Washington Post reported that 30 UK diplomatic staff members and their families have been safely evacuated, although about 2000 citizens registered with the embassy remain in Sudan.
There has been outrage by some Nigerians for what many described as a slow response by the Nigerian government to rescue its citizens in Sudan. The Nigerian government said that airlifting Nigerians stranded in the country has been impaired by fear of airstrikes, as the RSF has seized some airports, and that the administration is exploring other safe alternatives to evacuate Nigerians.
“I don’t think we are sluggish; the countries evacuated yesterday and a day before, no government had evacuated before then. The reason is that it is not as if there was a military war against another country,” Onyema said.
He added: “The President and the Vice President of a country started shouting at each other. Of course, it started getting worse, and that is why countries started looking at evacuating their people. The advantage these people have, the US, Italy, and France, have is that they don’t have 5,000 citizens in Sudan like Nigeria.”
Some Nigerian students living in Khartoum, while waiting for government intervention, have begun to make attempts to cross into Ethiopia through the Qallābāt border, which is about 582 km from Khartoum.
Another Nigerian student studying in Sudan, in a video posted online, said that while some Nigerians have made it to the Ethiopian border, they were denied entry into Ethiopia for not having a visa.
“We flew from Khartoum to the Ethiopian border because my sister was sick and there are no hospitals. We were told at the Ethiopian border that we cannot cross unless we have our visa and we don’t have it.”
Hamza said that reaching their families in Nigeria has become a problem due to disruption in internet connectivity which he claimed was due to a shutdown of the internet
“We pray that the government should do something because there are thousands of Nigerians here in Sudan. Some of us are not comfortable sitting in Sudan because our parents and relatives are worried, they are thinking of us. Because they sometimes shut down the network of the nation, we can’t communicate frequently with them,” he said.
