Maltreatment of Nigerians by South African immigration officials at the Oliver Thambo Airport in Johannesburg appears to be on the increase, according to frequent passengers on the route.
Cases of such frequent deportation and humiliation of Nigerian passengers at the airport abounded in the past. However, Nigerians who spoke to BusinessDay say there is a recent surge in the ugly treatment of anyone coming in with a Nigerian passport.
Two Nigerian passengers just back from a trip to Cape Town visited BusinessDay last night and recounted the harrowing experience of a senior manager of telecom firm, MTN, who was humiliated at the airport by South African immigration officials and subsequently deported to Lagos, on the next available flight.
According to one of the passengers who asked not to be identified because of fears he would be a target on the next trip to Johannesburg, said the MTN manager was detained for several hours at the airport, dispossessed of her phone and other valuables and denied the chance to use the telephone to get help simply because a young female black immigration official claimed she did not find two blank pages on her Nigerian passport to stamp her in.
The MTN senior executive, according to the passengers who witnessed the humiliation meted to her, had travelled on business class on South African Airways on September 29, 2013. She arrived at Oliver Thambo Airport at 5am and immediately proceeded to the immigration counter, as usual, to process her immigration clearance for entry.
Trouble began when the South African immigration official declared her passport invalid on the account that there were no two empty pages of her passport left to stamp her in.
When she asked the official to stamp on one of the pages, the immigration official refused and instead reported her to a superior officer who detained her and dispossessed her of her phones and denied her of water and food for hours.
According to our source, “Instead of listening to pleas by this woman and other passengers for a better ending to the incident, the South African official called in her superior, and from then on it appeared they were playing out a script.”
He added, “We were all attracted to the scene that was created and we have every reason to believe that as senior official of MTN, the largest South African firm in Nigeria, this woman must be familiar with travel procedures to South Africa, as such this must be one of the many cases of Nigerians being targeted by black South African immigration officials.”
A leading Nigerian CEO told Busiessday last night that on one of his visits to Johannesburg, where he had arrived carrying a multiple-year South African visa, the immigration official asked him pointedly to explain how much bribe he paid to obtain a multi-year South African visa.
Foluso Phillips, chairman of both the Nigerian-South African Chamber of Commerce and the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, describe the maltreatment as totally unacceptable, linking it to xenophobia and arrogance.
According to him, “At high level we say a lot of nice things, we engage in bilaterals aimed at establishing improved business and social links with both countries, but it would seem now that that spirit is not getting to those down the line.”
Many Nigerians had in the past been detained at the Johannesburg Airport for hours even when it was clear they were genuine travellers and attending programmes. In the process, some had been robbed of their belongings.
On March 2, 2012, South African officials ignited a diplomatic row between the two African economic giants when they repatriated 125 Nigerians travelling into South Africa on frivolous grounds like “possessing fake Yellow Fever Vaccination Cards”.
There are fears that the rising incidents could provoke backlash in Nigeria. According to one analyst, Nigerian businessmen are already complaining aloud about what they see as unfair treatment even in the area of business ownership.
“Whereas a South African group can own 100 percent of a business in Nigeria, the reverse is the case in South Africa because of stringent black empowerment requirement,” the analyst said.
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