XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS: Shame, you can’t even save Nigerians, KOWA tells APC govt

KOWA party has described as shameful the way and manner the All Progressives Congress (APC) led Federal Government of Nigeria has handled the xenophobic attacks carried out by South African citizens against Nigerians in their country.

The party frowned that under the present APC government Nigerians are no longer safe both at home and abroad.

KOWA in a statement signed and made available to Ripples Nigeria by its national secretary, Comrade Mark Adebayo, commiserated with the families of the victims of the recent murderous xenophobic attacks on fellow Africans in South Africa, especially Nigerians.

Part of the statement read, “While the actions of the South Africans are totally condemnable, the nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian government to the tragic incidents is to say the least, reprehensible.

“The federal government has demonstrated terrible lack of capacity to protect Nigerians at home and abroad in view of the APC government’s seeming helplessness in the face of mass killings across the country by suspected foreign gun men and marauding herdsmen.

“Nigerians are not safe within the country and without. Seeing Nigerians maimed, killed, and burnt alive in South Africa with their businesses destroyed by organised mob actions while the Nigerian government plays dumb is quite disheartening.

“We condemn in its entirety the Federal Government’s nonchalance, carelessness, incompetence, and abject failure in the face of mass killings of Nigerians in a foreign country. If a country like Uganda can act swiftly to evacuate her citizens when they came under attacks in South Africa, it’s such a shame that the Nigerian government was seating on its hands helplessly, confused, and absolutely unconcerned.

Read also: Reps say Senate delegation to S’Africa over Xenophobic attacks needless

“At the last count, it was alleged that over one hundred Nigerians have been lynched in the last one year alone. In many instances, the South African police have been reported to clobber many Nigerians to death on mere suspicion of unsubstantiated criminality. All these go without as much as a protest from the Nigerian government.”

KOWA then suggested that the Nigerian government declare diplomatic and economic sanctions against South Africa.

It said, “South African business interests run into billions of dollars in Nigeria and are far better than Nigeria in terms of comparative trade advantage. A comprehensive economic sanction against South Africa with concurrent severing of diplomatic ties pending a show of seriousness on the part of the South African government to protect Nigerians in that country would have gone a long way to forestall the latest mass killings of Nigerians by South Africans.

“Nigerians don’t deserve this type of beastly treatments from South Africa that we sacrificed huge resources to support during their decades-long anti-apartheid struggles”, the party lamented.

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