Nigeria will not cut diplomatic ties with South Africa over xenophobic attacks — Fani-Kayode

Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s envoy to South Africa, says Nigeria will not cut ties with South Africa over xenophobic attacks, but he warns that patience is wearing thin.

Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to South Africa, has said Nigeria will not sever economic ties with South Africa over xenophobic attacks on Nigerians and other Africans, TheCable reports.

He spoke at the inaugural Nigerian fair at the Nigerian consulate in Johannesburg on Saturday, where he noted that patience was wearing thin within the corridors of power.

Fani-Kayode described the attacks as a “very retrograde and almost primitive sentiment” and urged South Africans to embrace Pan-Africanism.

He said Nigeria contributed no less than $61 billion to South Africa’s struggle against apartheid between 1960 and 1994.

“Nigeria did so much. Mandela tax — we imposed a tax on our own civil servants during the course of the struggle, and that money was channelled to the ANC,” he said.

He described the perpetrators as a small minority who appeared to misunderstand the situation and had been “possessed by the spirit of Afrophobia and xenophobia”.

“We will pray for them, we pray deliverance for them,” he said.