The Federal Government and 268 Nigerians repatriated from South Africa have rejected claims by Pretoria that all those returned to the country, yesterday, were undocumented, blaming delays on South Africa’s Home Affairs system for pushing many illegal status.
The evacuees accused the South African government of delibrately delaying renewing their work permits and other documents, to have a reason to clampdown on Nigerians, while their security agencies extort them.
The Federal Government , has, meanwhile, pledged to activate the Nigeria-South Africa Binational Commission and the newly established Early Warning mechanism in order to respond faster to future threats against Nigerians in South Africa.
Also, some of the evacuees put the blame of their irregular status on the Nigerian Mission in Pretoria, saying that bureaucratic bottlenecks within the Commission further frustrated efforts to regularise their stay in South Africa.
Recall that the South African authorities had shortly before the departure of the evacuees from OR Tambo International Airport on Wednesday, claimed that all the 268 Nigerians cleared for repatriation were undocumented and were residing illegally in the country and slammed a five-year travel ban on them.
“The 268 departing first were all undocumented. None of the 268 Nigerian nationals who arrived at OR Tambo International Airport for repatriation on Wednesday are in South Africa legally. Not a single person of the 268 is legal,” South Africa’s Head of Immigration Enforcement, Stephen van Neel, said.
But pushing back on the claims, yesterday, at the reception of the first batch of the evacuees, in Lagos, Nigeria’s acting High Commissioner to Pretoria, Ambassador Temitope Ajayi, who led the evacuees, back to Nigeria, said the undocumented label was false and misleading.
“Many of these people you are seeing here, Minister, are not undocumented persons. Many of them became undocumented because of systemic failures of South African Home Service. Some have submitted requests for the extension of their resident permits for years. It takes two years, three years, five years, some are still lying down there. So, in the process, they were caught up in this.”
He described the S’Africa Home Affairs as a transactional section where backlogs and delays had left legitimate applicants stranded.
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