US Embassy, State Department Scramble to Arrange Flights For Stranded Citizens in Nigeria

The United State’s Mission in Nigeria has urged all citizens stranded in the country to enroll in the Smart traveler Program to get up to date information about special flights to take them home.

The U.S Embassy Thursday sent out a notice  to all US citizens in Nigeria asking them to await alerts about emergency flights to the U.S since the options of commercial flights is non existent.

Meanwhile, the  U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s efforts to bring home Americans from foreign countries amid criticism that his department has left U.S. citizens stranded during a global pandemic.

“There’s still a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of people who are trying to get back this way, and with travel shut down in many of these countries without any notice or little notice, there’s still a major undertaking,” Pompeo said in a radio program monitored by Per Second News in Washington, DC.

A senior Department of State official said the US is working round the clock to bring back citizens stranded abroad by the sudden cut-off in commercial flights.

The official said 13,500 Americans of the 10 million who live abroad have so far asked for help getting home, in addition to 5,700 the state department has already brought back from 17 countries, including 800 from Wuhan at the start of the crisis and 1,200 from Morocco last week.