The Chinese Embassy in Nigeria has confirmed that there are 60 Nigerians living in Wuhan, the Chinese city where Coronavirus broke out two weeks ago and are appealing to the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to evacuate them.
The latest development comes a week after Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, said 16 Nigerians in Wuhan had not indicated interest to return home. Zhou Pingjian who is the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria has said contrary, he stated that “Nigerians in that part of his country are 60, and that they are all adhering to the advisory issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO).”
“They have, however, not indicated their interest to come home. They will, however, contact our embassy if they like to come home,” he had said at a press conference in Abuja.
Zhou Pingjian, while addressing the press conference also said that, “there might be 40,000 or 50,000 Chinese nationals in Nigeria”, and that most of them are in Lagos.
”The death toll is not so much in other areas but at the epicentre, due to the stock of the cases, we still need some time to contain it” he said.
As of Monday morning, the virus had killed 362 people in China with many countries already evacuating citizens as a result of the health crisis.