Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has called on the Federal Government to work towards ensuring Nigerians do not have a hard time entering their own country.
At a press briefing in Lagos on Thursday, Soyinka said he was stopped from boarding a flight at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris because he did not have a special document.
“I had my vaccination, I have taken the 72-hour Covid test, I was negative but there was one more, there was a new one called PCR which the Nigerian government had begun to insist on,” he said.
The renowned playwright said he was also asked to fill a questionnaire which he thought bore little relation to COVID-19.
“I don’t believe that I should require – or any Nigerian should require – a special permission to enter his or her own country,” he said.
“What the majority of those questions have to do with Covid, I don’t understand; six Air France staff were working on various computers to generate this permit for which payment are being made.
“Nobody is saying we shouldn’t take the necessary precautions. Other nations do it, but I don’t believe that other nationals are obstructed the way we are.”
Soyinka added that the situation leaves Nigerians “lying on couches” at airports looking “trapped in limbo” just to enter their own country.
“So, whoever is responsible for these ones should sit and design something easier for humanity to fulfill and also to have backup situations; when technology breaks down, human intelligence should come to the rescue,” he said.
