UK announced that Nigeria and 10 other African countries will be removed from the country’s red list from 4am on Wednesday.
Nigeria and other African countries have been removed from UK’s red list, meaning nationals from the countries are now free to travel to the country.
Nigeria, Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe were slammed on the red list which World Health Organisation (WHO) described as travel apartheid.
The BBC says the red list was reintroduced in late November as a precaution after the emergence of the Omicron variant. But Health Secretary Sajid Javid said it had spread so widely the rules no longer had much purpose.
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“Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad,” he told parliament.
“Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel, we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4 am tomorrow morning.”
The removal of Nigeria from the UK red list followed a response from Nigeria to do the same. TheNiche had reported that the federal government hit back at Canada, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Argentina for banning Nigerians from entering their country.
According to the Peoples Gazette, a member of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 disclosed that they had reached an agreement with the ministry of aviation to place a ban on those countries in retaliation.
“We recommend that those countries, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Argentina, be also put on red list. Just like they did to us.
“And if they don’t allow our citizens to go into their country, who are they coming with airlines to pick out of our country? They might as well stop coming,” the online newspaper said.