More than 700 additional Nigerians stranded in South Africa are set to be evacuated over the coming days, a push that will bring the total number repatriated under the current emergency operation to nearly 1,300, making it one of the largest government led rescue efforts from South Africa in recent years.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said three more special evacuation flights have been scheduled following the registration of Nigerians affected by renewed xenophobic violence targeting foreign nationals, with the first of the remaining flights due to land at Murtala Muhammed International Airport at around 5:30am on Friday carrying 271 returnees. That flight follows three earlier evacuation batches totalling 593 people: an initial group of 258 returnees who arrived aboard a special Air Peace flight on June 11 and were received by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sola Enikanolaiye, a separate group of 66 Nigerians whose airfares were covered by a Nigerian philanthropist after logistical delays forced some stranded citizens to shelter temporarily at the Nigerian High Commission in Pretoria, who returned aboard a South African Airways flight on June 24, and a second government arranged flight that landed on June 30 with 269 returnees.
The ministry, in a statement from spokesperson Kimiebi Ebienfa, said every evacuation flight is fully funded by the federal government at no cost to returnees, and pushed back firmly against claims circulating on social media that officials at the Nigerian Mission in South Africa demanded money from citizens before adding them to evacuation lists, calling the allegations totally false and describing them as fake news that should be discarded. It framed the operation as reflecting a broader commitment to protecting Nigerians abroad, describing citizen welfare overseas as a central pillar of the country’s foreign policy, and thanked the various ministries, departments and agencies whose coordination made the exercise possible, saying the lives of Nigerians living abroad matter and that the ministry is trying its best to give them a sense of belonging.
The evacuation is the latest response to a recurring problem: South Africa, home to one of the continent’s largest Nigerian communities of professionals, students, entrepreneurs and skilled workers, has seen repeated waves of xenophobic violence over the past two decades tied to unemployment, crime and economic hardship, violence that has claimed lives, destroyed businesses and displaced hundreds of African migrants and prompted repeated diplomatic engagement between the two countries. The pattern is not new; widespread attacks on foreign owned businesses in 2019 triggered retaliatory protests in Nigeria and led to a similar emergency evacuation effort at the time.
