NIGERIA PERSPECTIVE

Abuja, June 18, 2026. While South Africa confronts an open crisis over its expulsion operations, Nigeria simultaneously executes its own enforcement campaigns against irregular immigration. On June 11, 2026, Nigerian military troops, working alongside the Department of State Services (DSS) and Nigeria's Immigration Service (NIS), arrested 46 undocumented migrants during a targeted sweep across multiple localities in Ogun State, including Ijebu Imushin and Ijebu Ilese. Among those detained: 23 nationals from Cote d'Ivoire, 18 from Burkina Faso, 4 from Togo, and 1 from Senegal. The operation underscores a regional reality often absent from debates on xenophobia in Southern Africa: West African states themselves manage substantial internal migration flows, fueled by chronic insecurity in the Sahel and Lake Chad basin.

Nigerian media outlets establish an implicit connection between these dynamics. BusinessDay Nigeria and Daily Post Nigeria reported a deadly attack in the Angwan Magaji community at the Kaduna-Plateau border, which killed nine people including children aged 4 and 5 during the night of June 16-17. Amnesty International characterized the incident as "one of the deadliest recent attacks in southern Kaduna State." This cycle of internal violence generates displacements that subsequently fuel migration flows toward Southern African destinations.

The Southern Solidarity Alliance, amplified by Punch Nigeria, issued an urgent call to the federal government on June 15, denouncing "coordinated and recurring threats" of banditry and kidnapping across multiple Southern states—Abia, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Oyo, and Ekiti. The group describes the situation as "a wholly unacceptable national security emergency." Teachers and schoolchildren are among kidnapping victims in rural zones, particularly in Oyo State.

This security context feeds deeper reflection on African governance models. Ibrahim Gambari, former chief of staff to ex-President Buhari, argued at an Abuja event for a return to African values in governance, asserting that "imported democratic systems lacking roots in African values have failed." This structural reading of continental security crises provides a framework through which South African migration tensions—and the police responses they provoke—register as symptoms of a wider deficit in regional sovereignty and cohesion.

Finally, the World Igbo Congress announced a Washington gathering for June 20-23 to draw international attention to Nigeria's insecurity, a signal that the Nigerian diaspora now amplifies these crises on the global stage—a dynamic that migrant communities in South Africa equally understand.