A fresh batch of Nigerians is set to be repatriated from South Africa, a month after the Federal Government completed its evacuation process from the former apartheid country, following an uptick in xenophobic violence.

The Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa, clarified that the new exercise, comprising a group of 83 Nigerians, was facilitated by private individuals.

The group will arrive at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, today at approximately 8:45 p.m. via South African Airways, Ebienfa said.

The exercise comes just weeks after the Nigerian High Commission in South Africa opened an online portal for nationals seeking to partake in a second repatriation exercise. Alexander Ajayi, Nigeria’s acting high commissioner to South Africa, told newsmen that the High Commission was compiling the data for future use once partners indicate their willingness to sponsor the return tickets.

The High Commission said it would keep the registration portal open until August 12 and urged private partners to support the move.

Ebienfa said the Federal Government acknowledged the “kind intervention” and sponsorship of tickets by the private individuals with “profound gratitude”.

MEANWHILE, the Consul General of South Africa in Lagos, Bobby Moroe, has rejected the description of South Africa as a xenophobic country, arguing that its constitutional provisions, treatment of migrants and efforts to regularise undocumented foreigners do not support such a characterisation.

Moroe said this yesterday at a roundtable discussion on “South Africa’s ‘Xenophobia’ in Comparative Perspective” organised by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos. He acknowledged incidents of violence against African migrants, but urged participants to examine the issue through facts, data and the historical relationship between Nigeria and South Africa.

He said while South Africa had experienced violent anti-migrant incidents, it was wrong to use isolated acts of criminality to define an entire country or its people, stressing that genuine concerns about migration, unemployment and pressure on public services should not automatically be equated with xenophobia.

Moroe said South Africa was host to about 3.9 million migrants, representing approximately 6.3 per cent of its estimated 65 million population, with about 2.4 million documented and the remainder undocumented.

He argued that the presence of such a large migrant population in a country facing unemployment, poverty and pressure on limited resources inevitably created tensions that needed to be addressed through effective migration governance rather than violence.

In his contribution, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sola Enikanolaiye, urged both countries to do more to confront Afrophobia and prevent hostility towards African migrants from undermining the historic relationship between both countries.

Enikanolaiye said the issue should not be treated as an abstract academic question but as a human, diplomatic and continental concern.

Director General of NIIA, Prof. Eghosa Osaghae, said the current issue must also be understood against the historical development of South Africa and the country’s experience of colonialism and apartheid.

Osaghae said the future of Africa depended significantly on Nigeria and South Africa working together, recalling that both countries had previously played major roles in advancing pan-Africanism and continental integration.