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The Nigerian High Commissioner-Designate to the Republic of South Africa, Ambassador Femi Fani-Kayode, has said he is mortified over a video allegedly showing a Nigerian national being beaten to death by members of the South African Police Service in his home.
Fani-Kayode, in a post on X, said: “I just watched a secretly recorded video of a Nigerian national being beaten to death by members of the South African police force in his home and I am mortified. The video is online.”
The former Minister of Aviation also said he listened to the young man’s screams as they put a plastic bag over his head and tortured him, adding that he was badly shaken.
“The villification, persecution, targetting, extra-judicial killing, racial stereotyping and murder of Nigerians in South Africa is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” the Nigerian High Commissioner-Designate also said.
In the post, Fani-Kayode further said: “Neither will we continue to be complicit in these crimes against our nationals by remaining silent in the face of them.
“That is the new order and I made my position clear on this at our meeting with the South African Foreign Minister yesterday. The hate needs to stop.”
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While saying that Nigerian lives and souls are precious before God, Fani-Kayode stated that he was not one of those self-deprecating Nigerians who placed no value on the Nigerian people and who saw nothing good in the nation.
“Call me a hardliner if you like, but a situation whereby since 2022, no less than 90 Nigerians have been murdered by Afrophobic forces, rampaging mobs, South African policemen and others, and not one person has been arrested, let alone convicted, for any of these heinous crimes speaks volumes.
“This year alone, six have been killed and, of those six, three were killed by South African police. Again, no arrests, and the one person that was initially arrested was released and has now disappeared.
“In Cape Town a few days ago, another of our nationals was allegedly “tortured to death” by South African police in his own home, whilst another was shot in the face with a rubber bullet by the same policemen, simply for protesting his friend’s murder.
“If our relations are to stabilise with South Africa, this has to stop. We have made much progress and we had a productive meeting with the South Africans yesterday, where we agreed to de-escalate the rhetoric and work closely together to stabilise the situation and build stronger bilateral ties.
“This is a step in the right direction and has brought us hope, but much more needs to be done. Action speaks louder than words,” Fani-Kayode concluded.
