Nigeria vs South Africa – Finally the Feud is settled

Nigeria’s relations with South Africa have got generally been fraught with irritants since 1994 when the political enslavement of Black South Africans was ended, at least, temporarily. Temporarily, because Black South Africans have got little economical power, as White South Africans control the South African economic system. Black South Africans suffer considerably from this situation and often wrongly take hold foreigners, especially Nigerians legally residing in South Africa, responsible for their problems.

Apart from this, Black South Africans do not know much about Nigeria’s global leadership roles in bringing apartheid to an terminate. And true, most South Africans did not and still do not know the sacrifices made by the regime and people of Nigeria in tormenting the White Supremacists and compelling them to have got eyes that see and ears that hear. The sacrifices made by Nigerians were not simply the forceful deductions from the salaries of all regime workers to assist the liberation movements, which prompted the international recognition of Nigeria as a Frontline State in the struggle against apartheid, but also the instruction given to every Nigerian holding the National Passport to use whatever means available to him or her to combat apartheid and its agents. The instruction was printed in the inner back cover of the old Nigerian passport. If South Africans are not much aware of the commitment of the Nigerian people to the freedom of black South Africans, the reasons cannot be far-fetched: as explained by the South African regime, there used to be two wings of the African National Congress during the anti-apartheid struggle: national and international wings. Nigeria related more with the international wing, but not to the knowledge of the national wing.

In fact, when Brigadier-full general Buba Marwa was Nigeria’s High Commissioner to South Africa, he drew attention to one radio-television word programme during which it was said that Nigeria engaged in the anti-apartheid struggle only for economical motivations. With this horrible thinking, no one should be surprised if there is always heightened hostility vis-à-vis Nigerians in the country. This factor alone largely explains the need for a better rapprochement between South Africans and Nigerians and why President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB)’s call for a people-to-people’s engagement in the relationships of the two countries is a desideratum.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s Visit and PMB’s Call

Without scintilla of doubts, Nigeria-South African relations have got witnessed evolution from the ordinary level of bilateralism to the level of Strategic Partnership and currently to that of Bi-National Commission (BNC). Bilateral ties have got a full general character. Strategic collaboration requires joint planning and harmonization of views. In both bilateral and strategic partnerships, only senior regime officials are involved in negotiations. At the level of Bi-National Commission, discussions are generally held at the level of Vice Presidents and Presidents. The Tenth Session of the Nigeria-South African BNC took place on Wednesday, 1st December 2021 in Abuja, Nigeria, with the receiving, and visiting, president participating. Thus, a BNC is necessarily a summit and the crescendo of bilateral consultations. And like any summit, consultations had already taken place at the level of the plenipotentiaries and then the Ministers before the engagement of the two presidents.

During the summit, PMB called for greater emphasis on people-to-people relations. The call, though significant, was only towing the line of what the South Africans had already embarked upon, and this observation is quite evident in PMB’s own statement. In the words of PMB, ‘some of the challenges identified during the last BNC have got not been completely addressed. We need to ensure that our people-to-people relations are enhanced to a point where there would be no need for unhealthy competition.’ PMB noted farther that, ‘in this regard, we need improvement in educational and scientific cooperation, mines and unloosen energy resources, transport and aviation, tourism, youths exchange programmes, trade and investments, and military cooperation.’