Nigerian Consul General in Johannesburg, Godwin Adama, in this interview speaks about how Nigerian businesses were destroyed by xenophobic attacks in South Africa. He spoke with Chinedu Eze before the recent evacuation of Nigerians. Excerpts:
How many Nigerians want to go back to their country?
I came in this morning with the Nigerians that are voluntarily returning from South Africa after the experiences they have had in the past years, particularly the very recent experience of the destruction of their property, looting of their property and everything. A number of them, as you will see them later, they are excited, they want to go back, feel like they can do something in Nigeria better than what they are doing here.
Can you please confirm to us the total numbers of Nigerians that were ready to go back?
As of the last compilation we had about 900 Nigerians, we are still registering. So, we are looking at over a 1000 now that may have reported at the embassy to document themselves.
Can you tell us probably the number of the casualties that we have; that is the number of those killed?
Talking of foreigners generally, we have within the period lost about two persons but we have not lost a Nigerian during these latest incidents. We have not lost any Nigerians because what happened was more of an attack and destruction of the properties of the Nigerians and other foreigners. But of course we are most hit, particularly in a street they called Juli Street in JPs Town, which is a Central Business District (CBD) of Johannesburg, where our people are many. I have gone through that street, it is a very long street and Nigerians have very big shops, car marts. I could see over 100 to 200 cars burnt in that particular incident. So in case of casualties of death during this time of latest incident; aside from some people we have lost in the past; maybe police brutality and others, we have not lost a Nigerian within this period and we are happy with that. We thank God for that. But bad enough, we have lost a lot of things.
Has the mission reached out to the South Africa government about this whole thing in order to ensure this does not happen in future? Has the mission engaged the government on this?
Of course we are engaging the South African government, the Minister of Foreign Affairs here. We have met with the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa. We met with the Ministers along with other African Ambassadors and they were quite apologetic about what happened. They tried to move relations forward. The Minister of International Relations and Cooperation did explain things and also sought comments from us and urged for cooperation from the various African missions and also asked for inputs on what could be done to ensure that these things do not happen again. The African Ambassadors at various levels condemned the xenophobic attacks. But the South African authorities tried to say that what happened was not Xenophobia attacks. They described it as it is criminality and what you see is that if you have criminality. But there is way to deal with criminality. You deal with criminality as criminality. Crime is not peculiar to any country. Whatever person is involved with crime deal with him in crime and even us, as a government in Nigeria, we also help you to deal with the issues of crime if you bring us in.
A Nigerian, an individual (Allen Onyema) made his flight available for free as part of his contribution to solving the challenges on ground. Of course, I know that our government is fully in favour of what is going on so that, at least, our people who are still stranded there, our people who have lost their property, our people who are challenged in various ways by the policies that confront them here will find their way home. They have an opportunity to be part of this laudable initiative that Barrister Onyema has brought up. I think he is a wonderful Nigerian and one of the greatest I have seen doing this kind of thing. We are very appreciative of what he is doing and we know that we would give him all the necessary cooperation to ensure that we have a successful and hitch free operation.
What is the reason for this attack on Nigerians, as indications show that Nigerians are the focus?
We have what is called Xenophobia and the issue here again is that there are perceptions; negative perceptions and some of these are based on things I cannot really understand. For instance, this country has high rate of crime. For instance, if you go on the internet today and check, not less than 50 people are murdered in South Africa in one day. That is the statistics you would see on the internet. They have about 20,000 murder cases in a year. So when you hear the number of killings you will see that it is a very volatile society. But we are concerned because sometimes it is as result of police brutality, which we have noticed and we have taken up and condemned and do not agree with it. But sometimes too such murders could be as result of being in a place where crime has taken place or you are killed because somebody wants to take something from you forcefully and you resist you are dead man. Generally, there is this feeling of insecurity as a whole in this country. Where you live in this country, where you stay, who you associate with and what you do matter a lot. You need to keep yourself save if not, something is permitted to happen.
The country generally has a high rate of crime; one of the highest in the world and it is part of the thing we are going through.
I understand you must have put in place huge logistics to achieve this evacuation; what are the challenges you must have faced?
Yes, we have put in a lot of logistics to achieve these with the assistance of the Minister of Foreign Affairs at home, who has given us all the necessary cooperation even though things are tight but because of the nature of this operation we are ready to put in everything to make it succeed. Part of the challenges of course is finance. It is a challenge but I know eventually we would be assisted to be able to complete it. But we are making everything possible within the limit of our resources to ensure that we embark on it, whether it is personal or whatever to make sure it goes. Some of the challenges we faced were proper documentation of Nigerians; sometimes we had to develop a structure that we would be able to do the database. Sometimes, deliberately, people do not feel fine, so we kept moving. For instance, I sent a manifest of the aircraft since the previous day and the following day, we were calling individuals one after the other to ensure that they will be on the flight. So we got these challenges, we also got the challenges of women who want to go back to Nigeria. These women felt they must leave this country because they were being maltreated by their husbands who brought them to South Africa. Bringing them here, the situation became bad for them because of the way their husbands were treating them. But the challenge we have in that area is that, the husbands would turn around and start accusing us of wanting to take their wives back to Nigeria without their consent. So we now demanded for consent letters and data pages of their passport to be able to accept any lady with children who the husbands are not travelling with. These are part of the challenges that we faced and of course, many have come from certain areas of this country; they do not have where to stay, they do not have resources to get themselves into hotel. I have accommodated a number of them from time to time even till up this morning. Nigerians in South Africa were so much encouraged by the attitude and prompt response of the Nigerians government to the issue. According to them, they have not seen it that way and they are excited about going to be able to see how they can start a new life. Some of them, if you interview them, they will tell you; nobody is angry they are just going home.
