The Nigerian government has moved swiftly to evacuate citizens caught up in renewed xenophobic violence in South Africa, arranging a fully government-funded Air Peace flight to carry the first batch of returnees from Johannesburg to Lagos as security conditions for foreign nationals in parts of South Africa deteriorated and Nigerians living there sought to come home.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the aircraft was scheduled to depart Johannesburg on Wednesday night and land at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos at 5 a.m. on Thursday, with all transportation costs absorbed by the federal government to ensure that no Nigerian was deterred from returning by financial barriers.
Ministry Spokesperson Kimiebi Ebienfa said preparations for receiving the evacuees had been finalized, with officials from migration, emergency management, and social welfare agencies deployed to the airport to conduct documentation, profiling, and welfare assessments before returnees were reunited with families and provided appropriate transitional support.
The latest evacuation placed Nigeria once again in the painful position it had occupied before, managing the consequences of a recurring cycle of anti-foreigner violence in South Africa that had periodically threatened the large and economically active Nigerian community living there. The 2019 iteration of the crisis had produced widespread property destruction, business losses, physical attacks, and deaths, prompting a major government-funded repatriation exercise and triggering a serious deterioration in bilateral relations between the two largest economies on the continent.
The underlying conditions that periodically produced such violence, including economic competition, inequality, and political exploitation of anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa, had not been structurally addressed in the intervening years, and the latest outbreak reflected the persistence of those dynamics. Nigeria said it remained in close communication with South African authorities and would continue to monitor developments, while making clear that the safety and welfare of its citizens abroad was a responsibility it took seriously and would act on when required.
For the Nigerians boarding the first evacuation flight, the journey home would bring an end to days of fear and uncertainty. For the government and the wider Nigerian community, their arrival reopened questions about how long the cycle of violence and evacuation could continue without a more durable diplomatic resolution between the two countries.
