South Africa's International Relations (DIRCO) Minister Ronald Lamola has described Nigeria's decision to suspend official visits to South Africa following anti-illegal immigration protests as unfortunate.
LAMOLA: "What I've read is that is the National Assembly of Nigeria says they are suspending any form of participation of visits, but we have not received any formal or official communication in that regard. It does not at this stage affect the bilateral relations between the two countries.
It will be very unfortunate if that will be because these are the two big giants of the African continent that needs to work together. If there are any issues, and we have raised it with our counterparts in Nigeria, that we need to engage on any bilateral issues or any challenges of bilateral nature between the two countries.
You will remember I visited Nigeria. We raised the challenges that we have with some of the Nigerian nationals in South Africa. Some of them creating enclaves in Sunnyside (Pretoria) and in some parts of of Johannesburg (Hillbrow) and some parts of the country. These are issues that needs to be confronted to be dealt with.
And they gave us a list of about 100 Nigerians that they said were killed in South Africa, which we have verified and we remain open to engage with the Nigerian authorities to deal with those issues of the list, how those people were killed or were murdered, and what were the reasons, and so forth."
Comments
Post a Comment