At last, the first batch of Nigerians evacuated from South Africa landed last Thursday. They were part of the 1,000 Nigerians who had registered for the voluntary repatriation arrangement organised by the Nigerian government following the uptick in xenophobic attacks against Nigerians and other African immigrants in South Africa.
The sheer magnitude of the number of Nigerians angling to flee is emblematic of the level of bestiality and emotional discomfiture they might have gone through in the hands of the villainous South African mobs.
The latest wave of xenophobic attacks and anti-foreigner protests, which began between April 27 and 29, escalated into violence early last month, spreading like a wildfire sloshed with petrol in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban.
The violence against Nigerians, Ghanaians and other African immigrants in South Africa is shaped by violent anti-migrant protests, the rise of vigilantism and the scapegoating of foreigners for economic crises. Coordinated protests in the major cities were led by groups like Operation Dudula, demanding that undocumented foreigners leave the country.
High unemployment and severe economic “inequality” have led many South Africans to accuse foreign nationals, including Nigerians, of being obtrusive, taking local jobs, burdening public services and causing high crime rates. Officials of Nigerian unions in South Africa have, however, dismissed these allegations as yarns shaped by sheer hatred and envy.
Tne Federal Government of Nigeria is now mulling retaliation against South Africa owing to the seismic level of savagery, harassment and debasing treatment meted out to Nigerians and the destruction of their businesses. More importantly, South African government has been annoyingly vacillatory in dealing with the issue.
According to Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the government is dissatisfied with what it sees as inadequate action from the South African government against attacks on Nigerians.
She argued that even Nigerians with legal residency have been subjected to intimidation and ferocious attacks, as their businesses are looted and plundered, while their family lives are sundered, in a supposed uprising against illegal immigrants. Yet, the authorities have failed to intervene.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has actually condemned vigilante actions and promised a crackdown on groups responsible for the xenophobic violence. But his pronouncements are no more than platitudes aimed at merely mollifying Nigerians.
Pretoria has been prevaricating in walking its talk. The government either lacks the will to stop the violence decisively or it tacitly acquiesces to it. Its ambivalent attitude to the uprising is rather oddly and unnerving.
The death of two Nigerians, Amaramiro Emmanuel and Ekpeyong Andrew, have particularly exacerbated the already combustible situation, heightening the hysteria of Nigerians in South Africa and causing the gorge to rise back home.
According to Nigeria’s Consulate in South Africa, Amaramiro, a Nigerian national, died on April 20, 2026 from injuries he had sustained after allegedly being beaten by operatives of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). Andrew, in his own case, was reportedly arrested on April 19, 2026, by the officials of the Tshwane Metro Police in Pretoria following an altercation. His body was discovered later at the Pretoria Central Mortuary.
The two deaths were among the most cited examples by Nigerian officials when criticizing South Africa’s indifference to the violence. Nigerian authorities have raised concerns about the inchoate and bizzare circumstances of their deaths. They are among the incidents fueling diplomatic tensions.
Nigerians, in a spurt of anger, have fulminated against the insufferable profanities exhibited against Nigerians and other Africans in some of the videos going viral online. Some of them show mobs of violent South Africans beating up African immigrant women on the streets.
There are cases of hostile crowds of South African males chasing and stripping African immigrant women, including Nigerians, naked on the streets, seriously manhandling and sexually debasing them in the full glare of a miscellany of angry and depraved young men who recorded the disgusting sights with their telephones.
Eye-witnesses, in some cases, have reported South African mobs hunting down African immigrants, including Nigerians, in their homes, stripping and beating them mercilessly and their children being turned back from schools. They are allegedly being thrown out of restaurants, shopping malls, hospitals and bundled out of their offices, work places and their stores being forcefully shut.
It bears repeating that the ferocious attacks against Nigerians by South Africans and more importantly, Pretoria’s standoffish attitude to the whole thing are a troubling perfidy in view of Nigeria’s prodigious contributions to the long drawn battles to end apartheid in that country.
However, tit-for-tat may not be part of the retaliatory options being considered by the Nigerian government because the Nigeria Police Force warned Nigerians recently not to attack South African nationals or businesses in Nigeria. It stressed that any response should occur through diplomatic and legal channels rather than mob action.
It is, perhaps, in that spirit that the Senate rejected the extreme option suggested by the former Edo State Governor, Adam Oshiomhole, now a senator, during a parliamentary debate on the issue recently.
He had opined that the operating licences of major South African companies in Nigeria, including MTN and DStv/MultiChoice, be revoked as a way of pressuring South Africa to protect Nigerians.
Other lawmakers in the National Assembly, however, proposed measures that were less punitive and more diplomatic. These included sending a high-level joint Senate–House delegation to South Africa to formally register Nigeria’s displeasure as well as reviewing and implementing bilateral agreements previously reached between Nigeria and South Africa.
Others are: demanding investigations into attacks on Nigerians and seeking enforceable guarantees for their safety; pursuing compensation, reparations and legal remedies for the Nigerian victims of the attacks and reconsidering or revoking diplomatic arrangements that lawmakers believed have been rendered nugatory by failure to protect Nigerians in South Africa.
These are laudable non-violent, diplomatic measures that the Federal Government could take to officially press home its dissatisfaction with and disappointment against South Africa over the incessant xenophobic attacks against Nigerians.
The only other option we add is that the authorities should carefully ferret out all illegal immigrants of South African descent in Nigeria and repatriate them. This is the mildest and fairest way we can respond to the recurrent and mindless violence against Nigerians and force Pretoria to tackle the baleful practice once and for all.
