A 46-year-old businessman, Pius Ezekwem, native of Awo-Omamma, Imo State, is the latest victim of the senseless killings of Nigerians in South Africa.
Ezekwem, who reportedly owned a chain of bed and breakfast guest houses in King William’s Town in Eastern Cape Province, was picked up by a team of eight South African policemen from a restaurant where he was having his meal and led to his home on August 23. He was tortured to death in the presence of his South African wife and mother-in-law in the guise of being interrogated.
Every month, a Nigerian is murdered in South Africa. It’s also possible in a month that more than one is killed. The victims are usually shot or tortured to death by the country’s policemen, shot dead or knifed by robbers or lynched by mobs during xenophobic attacks.
Before Ezekwem’s incident, 17-year-old Chinonso Obiaju was killed in Johannesburg on July 20. Obiaju reportedly went to buy an item from a shop with his friend when someone chased and opened fire on them, killing him. His friend was also critically injured.
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Eight days earlier, Martin Ebuzoeme was the victim of another gruesome murder. According to the President of Nigerian Union in South Africa, Mr. Adetola Olubola, Ebuzoeme was killed by unknown assailants in Yeoville, Johannesburg, about 7:30pm on July 12.
Before the July 12 killing, there was the assassination of Mr. Ozumba Tochukwu-Lawrence, also by an unidentified gunman at 10 Koppe, Middleburg, Mpumalanga on July 6.
Ebuzoeme’s killing happened just about 24 hours after South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited Nigeria. During the visit on July 11, Ramaphosa had blamed the killings of Nigerians and other foreign nationals in the country on “high level of unemployment among the youth as well as other social factors, emanating from long apartheid misrule.”
The list of murdered Nigerians is long and still growing. Statistics showed that between 2016 and 2018, 127 Nigerians were murdered. And from January to August 2019, 13 more have been killed. In most cases, the culprits go scot-free.
It was against the backdrop of the unabating wanton killings that the South African President spoke during a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Tokyo International Conference for Africa Development in Yokohama, Japan, last week, promising that his government would address the killings in his country.
He said: “On the issue of Nigerians, who are dying in South Africa, we feel very upset about that.
“Obviously, our criminal justice system is working on it. We don’t support killings.
“Nobody should ever be killed but it’s also good to use this opportunity in Japan to renew the bond between us.”
Although the South African president may be upset by the unending killings, there is hardly any genuine commitment that the savagery would be over soon.
There is something about Ramaphosa’s utterance that suggests that his country’s interest is just about renewing economic ties with Nigeria.
Disgustingly, South African leaders before him had similarly paid scant regard for the sanctity of the lives of Nigerians doing business in their country.
In the heat of xenophobic protests and destruction of property of foreigners in South Africa last year, the King of Zulu, Goodwill Swelithini, had declared that those who came from outside should return to their countries, stressing that, “The fact that there were countries, who played roles in the country’s struggle for liberation should not be used as an excuse to create a situation where foreigners are allowed to inconvenience the locals.”
Such is the warped emotion of South African leaders and politicians and little wonder the killings have continued with policemen watching nonchalantly as Nigerians are mobbed to death, when they themselves are not doing the killing.
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Angered and seeking a solution to the endless carnage, the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, recently picketed companies with South African shareholding in some states.
The Buhari administration has yet to take a strong measure to show Nigeria would no longer condone the mindless killings of her citizens.
When in 2012, South Africa denied entry to 125 Nigerians on arrival at the country’s Oliver Tambo International Airport, Kempton Park, Gauteng, on the allegation of possessing fake yellow fever vaccination papers, the President Goodluck Jonathan administration promptly retaliated sending back 130 South Africans at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos.
Then foreign minister, Olugbenga Ashiru, branded Pretoria xenophobic. South Africa quickly apologised, rejecting the labelling and promising new procedures to avoid a repeat of the “regrettable incident.”
The primary responsibility of government is to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens anywhere in the world. The adoption of diplomatese approach in the face of the unending killings of Nigerians in South Africa does not count well for the Buhari administration.
We strongly believe that until the government demonstrates that the life of every of our citizen matters and whoever kills a Nigerian must pay dearly for it, the killings would persist and the murderous South Africans would continue their heinous crime with impunity.
