Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa has called for proper reorientation and education for South Africans on how to relate with foreigners.
The Presidential aide disclosed this while featuring on TVC’s Your View program against the backdrop of xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
Dabiri also added that the ministry is taking it up, although the process might be slow, there is need to encourage Nigerian students not to go down that low and resort to attacking South African brands like Shoprite, MTN and PEP.
Erewa had in a strongly worded statement issued on Sunday, criticised a statement credited to the South African Foreign Affairs Ministers. She said the minister failed to realise the enormity of these attacks following his response that the death of “more than 100 Nigerians” should be sorted out at the diplomatic level.
She said “we are worried about the criminalisation of illegal migration, especially among ourselves as brothers in Africa.
“We are worried in particular about the criminalisation of Nigerian migrants in South Africa. Yes, some do commit crimes and deserve to be punished, but the extra-judicial killings worry us a lot.
“We also want to appeal to Nigerians wherever they are to obey the laws of the land:
we are worried as well, about extra-judicial killings anywhere in the world.”
She said Nigeria lost 116 persons to such killings in South Africa and in 2016 alone, 20 persons were killed.
