Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the UK has branded as “travel apartheid” the UK’s decision to put the West African state on its red list, meaning travellers have to pay to isolate in a quarantine hotel.
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Speaking to the BBC, Sarafa Tunji Isola said: “The reaction in Nigeria is that of travel apartheid.
“Because Nigeria is actually aligned with the position of the UN secretary general that the travel ban is apartheid, in the sense that we’re not dealing with an endemic situation, we are dealing with a pandemic situation, and what is expected is a global approach, not selective.”
Mr Isola added that Omicron “is classified as a mild variant – no hospitalisation, no deaths. So the issue is quite different from the Delta variant.”
UK government minister Kit Malthouse said the wording “travel apartheid” was “very unfortunate language”.
“We understand the difficulties that’s created by these travel restrictions, but we’re trying to buy a little bit of time so that our scientists… can work on the virus and assess how difficult it’s going to be for us to cope with as a country,” he told the BBC.
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