As missiles streak across the skies between Israel and Iran, Nigerian citizens living in the war-torn regions are pleading for urgent evacuation, forced to take cover in underground shelters while criticizing their government’s slow response. While other nations have already begun airlifting their citizens, Nigeria’s Federal Government says it is still “awaiting border clearance”—leaving hundreds stranded in the crossfire.
In the dead of night, as security sirens wail across Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, a frantic search for safety begins. For hundreds of Nigerians, this is the new, terrifying reality. Caught in the escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran, their pleas for help are now emerging from the underground bomb shelters that have become their temporary homes.
While the Nigerian government states it is awaiting “border clearance” to begin evacuations, those on the ground paint a picture of abandonment and fear.
“We are in an Israeli bomb shelter and I can’t answer calls right now,” Ekene Abaka, a Nigerian in Tel Aviv, managed to send in a hasty Facebook message to Saturday PUNCH. His brief, urgent words capture the chaos.
Another Nigerian, a software engineer speaking anonymously from a shelter in Jerusalem, described the desperation. “Most of the areas where Nigerians live in Israel are in Tel Aviv. As a matter of fact, that is the main area where most of the missiles are going… We are on the run,” he said, lamenting that the Nigerian embassy has seemingly ceased operations. “The Nigerian embassy is situated in Tel Aviv. It has shut down. It’s not doing anything about the issue at the moment.”
The raw terror of these moments was captured in a viral video posted by “Travels Vlog,” a Facebook page documenting the lives of Nigerians in the Middle East. The footage shows a group scrambling for safety as the sky lights up with incoming missiles.
“Everybody is running helter-skelter now. I didn’t grab my water. Oh! Those are the missiles there. They have fallen now,” one person cries out. Their panic intensifies when they find the nearest shelter locked. “Oh! It’s closed. Why did they lock this place? Let’s go, there is another one over there. We can’t stay here,” another voice urges.
The host of the vlog, Solomon, explained how the Israeli government provides a ten-minute warning via text message before the sirens begin to blare, triggering the panicked rush for cover.
For these Nigerians, and over a thousand others in the region, those ten minutes are a lifetime. They are not just running from missiles; they are running towards the hope that their government hears their cries and that help is on the way. Right now, stuck between diplomatic protocols and a barrage of missiles, that hope feels terrifyingly distant.
Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 Nigerians stranded in Iran have remained in limbo, as the Federal Government awaits final border clearance from Armenia to begin their evacuation.
According to the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kimiebi Ebienfa, the Nigerian Embassy in Tehran has completed logistical arrangements to move citizens to Armenia, the nearest border country, where they are to be airlifted home from the capital, Yerevan.
He told Saturday PUNCH that embassy officials were in close talks with Armenian authorities to finalise the movement of evacuees across the Iran-Armenia border.