From Johannesburg to Belfast, the same story:Anti Immigration riots

Nigeria migration crisis sparks urgent warning over rising emigration, unrest abroad, and calls for stronger governance and accountability

Let’s call it what it is, incitement. The kind that turns fear into fury, and fury into chaos, death and destruction.

Also read: Evacuated Nigerians arrive in Lagos after South Africa xenophobic crisis

In Belfast, the match was struck after a Sudanese migrant in his 30s launched an unprovoked attack on a local man. The man lost an eye. He would have lost his life if passersby hadn’t intervened.

Then came the amplification. Nigel Farage seized on it, and on the Henry Nowak case before it — where a young white man died after being falsely accused, then arrested while bleeding and pleading “I can’t breathe.”

Farage called it proof of “two-tier policing.” The police deny it. The government now faces pressure to review policy.

With Reform UK’s gains in local elections, anti-immigrant sentiment is climbing. Tommy Robinson is calling for street protests.

Ogilvy’s family has pushed back, condemning the riots and reminding Belfast that migrants built parts of the city they’re now burning.

In Johannesburg, the story is different, but the wound is the same. Black South Africans attacking fellow Africans. Afriphobia, I’ll call it. The irony is brutal.

This is the country Nigeria bankrolled, stood for, during the fight against apartheid. To watch it devolve into fratricide is more than disturbing. It’s a betrayal of history.

But let’s look inward too. Nigeria should ask itself why its citizens leave in their thousands. The drift to South Africa didn’t start yesterday. It’s been building for decades.

The economic reversal is stark. South African companies dominate Nigerian markets — banks, telecoms, retail. An indictment. Not of South Africa, but of Nigerian governments, past and present, that failed to create prosperity at home.

We don’t hold them to account. We accept press statements and evacuation planes.

Remember Libya? Nigerians languished in prisons there. Yet returnees said it plainly: “Give me the chance, I’ll go back.” Better living conditions. Infrastructure. Jobs.

South Africa tells the same story. Nigerians cite schools that work. Hospitals that function.

This is what should drive our policy conversations. Not just headlines about riots and “xenophobia.” The real question: why does home keep losing?

Violence never starts with the blow. It starts with the whisper. The one that tells you the man next to you is the problem.

Escape is not a strategy. It’s surrender. For three decades we’ve run. To South Africa for hospitals. To UK for jobs. To anywhere but home.

We’ve watched South African brands colonize our markets while our own leaders sell us excuses. And we clap when they send evacuation planes. That has to end.

Fixing Nigeria won’t happen in Pretoria, Johannesburg, or London. It happens at home.

Hold your leaders to account. Demand schools that teach. Hospitals that heal. Jobs that pay. Stop settling for statements after blood is spilled. Stop accepting “better conditions abroad” as an excuse for failure at home.

Also read: Nigeria condemns South Africa’s weak xenophobia response

We either build Nigeria, or we keep running from it. We should all be listening for the right whisper: the one that says “this is your country. Fix it.”

Kede Aihie