By Chigachi Eke
(Business Day)
July 30, 2026
WITNESS TO HISTORY
I arrived South Africa in June 2002, and a year later the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) offered me a full postgraduate scholarship for my Master of Arts. Every Nigerian I met at Wits with First Class or Second Class Upper, without exception, was offered a scholarship by South Africans.
Even before my graduation in June 2005, South Africans gave me a Permanent Resident Permit. I got my South African Citizen Identity Document and International Passport by 2009. Thereafter, I registered as a financial member of the African National Congress, ANC, and voted in the 2009 Election.
That same year, 2009, I served as National Secretary of the Chief Baldwin Obasi-led Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa when the association formed an alliance with the ruling ANC in that year’s Presidential Election that brought Jacob Zuma to power. During our pro-ANC rally at the Hillbrow Theatre, I spoke before Honourable Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who was South African Minister of Home Affairs. She was the ANC delegate to our rally.
In her speech, the esteemed Minister Nqakula assured Igbos of South Africa that was how we introduced ourselves and were so recognised by Her Excellency, that it was the policy of her government to empower Ndigbo and Nigerians. Then she told us to tell Nigerians with degrees in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geography to come to South Africa and take up teaching jobs. Where did she wrong Nigerians in that?
The leadership of Randfontein Municipality was so impressed by our discipline during the Mother-of-all-Rallies organised by the ANC two weeks later at the Ellis Stadium, Johannesburg, that it issued us a Special Invitation during its African Day Celebration. The good people of Randfontein wanted the Ohanaeze to come and talk to them about Igbo Culture. The paper I presented on behalf of the Ohanaeze was titled, “Man and His Chi: The Igbo of West Africa.” I chose this topic because my South and East African friends at Wits were curious about why most Igbo names bear “Chi.” The Igbo community under Chief Obasi attained a golden age in diplomacy. Even the scourge of Igbo-killing-Igbo was efficiently tackled.
Therefore, I am competent to speak on Nigerians’ uneasy relationship with Black South Africans because I was on the ground zero. It is not true that Nigerians helped Black South Africans liberate themselves from Apartheid only for them to forget so soon. Be it known that Black South Africans wholeheartedly welcomed and empowered us with ways and means, including their citizenship. We are the ingrates deliberately committing crimes in South Africa. That is the real bone of contention being craftily deemphasised by commentators; for which reason I place it back on the centre stage. Not every Nigerian in South Africa commits crime. But even those of us not into crimes bear the stigma of collective guilt.
It is not my business here to talk about other African migrants in South Africa. I am only concerned with the Nigerian problem, which is essentially an Igbo/Yoruba/Edo problem. Elements from these ethnic groups are involved in wholesale criminality that creates tensions between Black South Africans and us.
PATTERNS OF CRIME
Two factors will help you understand the crimes we perpetrate in South Africa: One, the crop and character of Nigerians found there. The Igbo population, the largest, was 300,000 in 2009. Yorubas and Edos constitute the second and third largest groups. Unlike what obtains in the Americas, Nigerians in South Africa are basically traders, artisans and outlaws who came to South Africa to “hustle.”
This trader/artisan/hustler population means trouble. Four out of every ten Nigerians prefix “Dr” to their names as a respectable mask for criminality. A genuine graduate thinks twice before committing a crime since he hopes to use his certificate someday. Self-interest steers him from moral unorthodoxies. But a hustler who has no certificate could do anything and vanish into thin air. For instance, a Nigerian patent medicine seller scammed the management of Hillbrow Clinic, Johannesburg, into recruiting him as a medical doctor in the late 1990s. He ran away when his employers became suspicious, as he refused to enter the theatre and perform surgeries.
Xenophobia originated within the Nigerian community in South Africa. It is the natural response of law-abiding Nigerians against their criminal-minded countrymen. The dog-eat-dog that obtains among Nigerians means you must develop antipathy against other Nigerians not to be murdered. There is no morality, civility or love as Nigerian-kill-Nigerian. Black South Africans only imbibed and magnified it upon realising what we were hiding. You don’t expect them to tolerate the very criminals you detest? That is the provenance of xenophobia in South Africa.
And two, also factor in the character of Black South Africans if you must understand the patterns of crime we commit in South Africa. They are humble and honest when answering your questions. Their humility misled us into seeing our benevolent hosts as lazy idiots. Argumentative by nature, our presumptuousness means we also talk rudely to them.
But there is also the other side of Black South Africans that terrifies every Nigerian. This is their penchant to kill without warning. Nigerians “talk Shakara” but don’t shoot, but Black South Africans shoot without talking. Nigerians only behave nicely inside the Hiace bus of a Zulu driver because bludgeoning you to death with his dreadful knobkerrie means nothing to him. In Nigeria, we fear soldiers, but bus drivers are the people to avoid in South Africa. We have a deep phobia for Black South Africans. That explains why everyone scampered when they announced all foreigners must leave by 30th June 2026.
STEVE BIKO TWO-COMPLEX SYNDROME
At play is the classical Steve Biko Two-Complex Syndrome: Black South Africans who bear the brunt of our crimes detest Nigerians. But knowing full well our intransigencies, we Nigerians are ever suspicious that Black South Africans are itching to snuff out our lives. Our fear conditions the crimes we commit. For instance, armed robbery is a no-go area as it could bring you into physical contact with Black South Africans who will certainly shoot you dead.
Crimes favoured by Nigerians in South Africa are those we execute from a safe distance. They include: (1) Illegal coronation of Ezendigbo by extortionists associated with the Igbo community (2) Wholesale manufacture and importation of cocaine, methamphetamine, ephedrine, etc, by Igbo drug barons (3) Global frauds by elements among the Yoruba and Edo communities (4) Abduction and trafficking of South African underage girls for prostitution by Igbo, Yoruba and Edo cultists, and (5) Rampant killing of Nigerians by Igbo, Yoruba and Edo cultists.
Space allowing, we now address the criminal coronation of Igbo kings that angered Black South Africans into expelling all African nationals.
CRIME OF EZENDIGBO
In 2008, Dr Dozie Ikedife, President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, the socio-cultural association of the over 80 million Igbos, rushed down to South Africa to warn us never to crown anyone “Ezendigbo South Africa” (Igbo King in South Africa). He cautioned that such an institution could bring the peace-loving Igbo community into confrontation with our host country. Instead of a king, Dr Ikedife implored us to pick one of us for him to recognise as “Onyendu Ndigbo South Africa” (Igbo Leader in South Africa).
Dr Ikedife arrived South Africa with two powerful Igbo monarchs, namely, HRM Eze Cletus Ilomuanya, Chairman of the South Eastern Traditional Rulers Council; and HRM Igwe Kenneth Orizu, the Igwe Nnewi. But even while Dr Ikedife and our kings were addressing the Igbo community, the gang interested in crowning one of their own king approached the South African High Court to restrain Dr Ikedife and our monarchs from recognising anyone as “Onyendu” (Leader), as the Igbo community already had “Eze” (King). The anarchists had no respect for anyone.
A PEOPLE THAT DON’T TAKE ADVISE OF THEIR LEADERS
Our leaders left South Africa after inaugurating Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa with Chief Baldwin Obasi as president, Prince Kenneth Okafor as vice president, Sunny Unachukwu-John, a Unisa law student, as Youth Leader and Chief Frank Times Ifeanyichukwu as “Onyendu Ndigbo South Africa.”
With the pent-up fury of psychopaths, the pro-monarchical gang “crowned” an ex-convict “Ezendigbo South Africa” and also formed a parallel Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa. Thus began the schism in the Igbo community.
Eventually, Chief Ifeanyichukwu was poisoned and only the ex-convict masquerading himself as Ezendigbo South Africa was left standing. His death cleared the coast for the two factions of Ohanaeze to merge. But rather than uniting Ndigbo for progress, especially in building the much-desired Igbo Market as a way of helping our boys go legit, the unified Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa under different leaderships teamed up with two extortionist groups calling themselves Nze na Ozo South Africa and Eze-in-Council South Africa. The Evil Trinity provoked Black South Africans by crowning fee-paying Igbos “Eze,” “Igwe”, and “Obi,” contrary to Dr Ikedife’s instruction. Anambra traders are notorious for this crime.
In February 2026, the law-abiding Igbo community sounded the alarm that one Solomon Ogbonna Eziko from Enugu State paid money to the corrupt president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa, Eze-in-Council South Africa, Nze na Ozo South Africa and the Enugu State association to crown him “Ezendigbo East London.” Concerned Igbos told him never to try that in an election year as things could be explosive. But Eziko shunned wisdom and went ahead with his criminality. The president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo South Africa was fully complicit in this crime because he actually placed the “crown” on Eziko’s head. He fully well knew what he was doing could kill innocent Igbos in South Africa but still went ahead, anyway.
PROVOKED SOUTH AFRICANS
Provoked, Black South Africans, reeling from centuries of alien rule and land dispossession, reacted to the Eziko excesses by labelling Igbos “colonialists,” “criminals” and “terrorists.” Resolved to defend the land of their ancestors, it came as a rude shock to them that their Nigerian brothers could contrive to also rule them as cruel white settlers did. Enough is enough. They told Nigerians and other African nationals that the safety of any foreigner, documented or not, found in their country after 30th June 2026 could not be guaranteed.
The first to flee South Africa were Nigerian drug peddlers, cultists, Ezes, Obis and Igwes. Those stranded are poor Nigerians who did legitimate businesses like selling vegetables on the pavement. Summer in the Northern Hemisphere is winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Nigerian children and their hapless parents forced to pass many nights outside the Nigerian High Commission in Pretoria are exposed to the biting winter cold. Other Africans also passing winter nights outside their embassies blame Nigerians for their predicaments. Of course, Nigerians are also educating their fellow-travellers from other African countries that though they were Nigerians, they were not Igbos who caused the problem.
▪️Part 2 of this Piece Follows. Eke, a seasoned writer is based in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.
Email: chigachieke@yahoo.co.uk;
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