NIGERIA has condemned its inclusion on England’s red list as “travel apartheid,” as anger grows at sweeping restrictions placed on African nations. 

Travellers arriving from Nigeria to Britain will be required to quarantine for 10 days in a hotel at a cost of more than £2,000, and take two PCR tests. 

The country was added to the red list on Monday by ministers as part of moves to slow the spread of the omicron variant. There are now 11 countries on the list — all African nations. 

Nigerian High Commissioner to London Sarafa Tunji Isola said that he agrees with United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres, who criticised measures imposed by dozens countries against African nations as “travel apartheid.”

“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 [a] selective [one],” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. 

Mr Guterres previously said that measures to ensure safe travel should be implemented instead of bans to “avoid this kind of, allow me to say, travel apartheid, which I think is unacceptable.”

Policing minister Kit Malthouse said that while he understands the difficulties caused by such measures, the phrase “travel apartheid” is “very unfortunate language.” 

The Department of Health and Social Care has said that 21 cases of the omicron variant recorded in England have been linked to travel from Nigeria. 

Ministers also implemented further travel restrictions over the weekend requiring travellers to take a pre-departure PCR test as well as a test within 48 hours of their arrival to Britain. 

Transport workers’ union TSSA has called on the government to give extra funding to protect jobs in Britain’s travel trade in response to an expected drop in Brits travelling abroad due to the new costs. 

The union’s general secretary Manuel Cortes said: “The government must provide bespoke support for our travel sector including a furlough scheme so that those employed in the sector don’t pay with their jobs for containing the spread of the omicron variant.”

He also echoed calls for the government to introduce caps on the prices of PCR tests. 

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged the government today to do “whatever it can” to bring test prices down as people are “really hammered by prices that can’t be justified.”