European Union nationals are currently being evacuated at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos as the European continent has deployed two aircraft to ferry back 637 nationals from Nigeria amid COVID-19 crisis.
399 Europeans have earlier been evacuated with an Air France Boeing 777-300ER with registration AF986 from the MMIA at 1:56pm; yesterday, the flight which is airborne is classified as essential and humanitarian operations.
Another batch of 238 passengers including German nationals who were seen at the airport earlier hoisting their flag while going through screening procedure are also airborne as at 1546hrs on a Lufthansa Airbus A350 flight LH2575 which landed in Lagos 12:29 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) (01.29pm) to take them and other Europeans to Munich.
European Union member States including Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Greece and Ireland, amongst others on Tuesday announced the evacuation flights for nationals of its 27 member states in Nigeria.
This evacuation is recorded as the single largest evacuation from the West African nation since the COVID-19 outbreak.