Nigeria urged South Africa on Monday to do more to prevent xenophobic attacks on Nigerians and other African migrants, saying repeated violence \u200bwas straining ties and raising questions about whether the government was complicit.<\/p>\n
The \u200ccomments came during talks in Abuja between Nigerian officials and a South African delegation led by Special Envoy and International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sola \u200bEnikanolaiye said President Bola Tinubu had ordered the meeting to address what \u200bAbuja described as persistent “Afrophobic attacks” targeting Nigerians and other African migrants \u2060in South Africa.<\/p>\n
South African vigilantes have attacked foreign nationals and looted foreign-owned shops \u200bon numerous occasions in the last few months, as many South Africans blame immigrants \u200bfor problems such as crime and unemployment.<\/p>\n
At least\u00a0four people have been killed.\u00a0Anti-immigrant protesters\u00a0called for undocumented migrants to leave last month and marched in several South African cities.<\/p>\n
At least 1,490 Nigerians \u200bhave been\u00a0evacuated from South Africa\u00a0since the latest outbreak of xenophobic violence, Nigerian \u200bofficials said.<\/p>\n
“We have seen a pattern that has become a concern to the Nigerian government,” Enikanolaiye \u200csaid, \u2060citing outbreaks of anti-migrant violence dating to 1995. He said at least 98 Nigerians had been killed in xenophobic attacks since 2022.<\/p>\n
As Africa’s most industrialised economy, South Africa has attracted migrants from Nigeria as well as other countries including Ghana, Mozambique \u200band Malawi.<\/p>\n
Enikanolaiye said not \u200bonly suspected criminals \u2060have been attacked but also nationals legally living in South Africa.<\/p>\n
He added that Nigerian authorities documented cases in which police appeared \u200bunwilling to intervene, raising “issues of complicity if the state authorities \u200bare unwilling \u2060or not able” to protect foreign nationals.<\/p>\n
Lamola said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government was firmly opposed to xenophobia, racism and discrimination.<\/p>\n
Enikanolaiye said that while Nigeria does not condone criminal \u2060activity \u200bby its citizens abroad, suspects should face due process \u200brather than mob violence.<\/p>\n
“If there are criminals, the solution is not to kill them. Get them arrested, \u200bprosecuted.”<\/p>\n
Source: Reuters<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nigeria urged South Africa on Monday to do more to prevent xenophobic attacks on Nigerians and other African migrants, saying repeated violence \u200bwas straining ties and raising questions about whether the government was complicit. The \u200ccomments came during talks in Abuja between Nigerian officials and a South African delegation led by Special Envoy and International…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":96155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96156,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96154\/revisions\/96156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}