Nigeria’s Consul-General in Johannesburg, Godwin Adama, says Nigeria mission is working closely with the South Africa government to address social media campaign calls for protest against Nigerians.
Adama disclosed this in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
He was reacting to a recent purported social media campaign by South Africans calling for protest against Nigerians in that country.
The campaign call for the proposed protest, posted on Twitter by some South Africans is scheduled to hold on September 23 in South Africa.
He said there had been no attacks so far against Nigerians and the Nigeria’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Mr Kabiru Bala was working closely with the South Africa government to resolve the matter.
“There was no attack at all, it is only social media campaigns and notice or call for protest. We are only working to discourage it and protect Nigerians; so far Nigeria’s High Commissioner is engaging the host authorities. He is also working together with us to prevent any untoward protest to the mission that can ignite any trouble, so far, the area is calm and quiet, no attacks against Nigerians at all. These are all the social media campaigns not on mainstream media, no attacks other than this campaign now. The missions are collaborating with the Nigerian Citizens Association in South Africa (NICASA), and host governments to ensure safety of Nigerians”.
He explained that the mission was making effort to follow up the issue from various angles with the hope that the matter would be duly addressed.
He revealed that the mission had embarked on an awareness campaign with limited available resources to sensitise Nigerians across all the provinces, to promote peaceful co-existence and tackle the problem.
“Our strategy is to sensitise our people to conduct themselves in the best way, of course some get involved in petty things that trigger criminality. One of the strategies we are engaging now is to speak to them one-on-one, even though we cannot speak to many people at once, at least within the limits of the COVID-19 protocol. This is what we have been doing in Cape Town, it helps to interact and people are equally given the opportunity to ask questions and get answers to whatever their challenges are. The good thing is the High Commissioner had written to the host government, alerting the authority on the need to deal with the whole process and for everything to be done properly”.
