The British Government has announced its readiness to lift the travel ban placed on Nigeria and 10 other African countries.

The BBC quoting the country’s Health Secretary Sajid Javid revealed that all 11 countries will be removed from the UK’s travel red list from 4am on Wednesday.

WuzupNigeria reported that Nigerian travellers were banned from entering the UK about a week ago after reportedly discovering 21 passengers with Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, 19 of which flew directly to Britain from Nigeria, according to the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, last Thursday.

Alongside Nigeria, Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe were added to UK’s red list.

Following the announcement of the ban in late November, the Nigerian Government had described its inclusion as unjust and recently threatened to retaliate by banning travellers from some foreign countries.

Although the UK did not change its mind based on the threat, the Health Secretary said it had spread so widely the rules no longer had much purpose.

“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 4am tomorrow morning.”