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Nigerian ethnoreligious prejudice vs South African xenophobia 07 Jul 2026

Nigerians are outraged again as a new episode of xenophobia by some Black South Africans targets Nigerian migrants in South Africa. Thankfully, this latest hostility stopped short of bloodshed. Instead, it took the form of a rancorous demand for Nigerians to leave the country.

But ironically, this outrage over hostility towards compatriots in South Africa is set against a backdrop of worsening ethnic favouritism and religious bigotry in Nigeria’s own politics and governance. The fallout has been devastating, fuelling political fragmentation, economic weakness, and widespread insecurity. As politicians exploit these divisions with the support of their followers, Nigeria's criticism of South African xenophobia rings hollow, despite how despicable that behaviour truly is.

Many Nigerians are disappointed that Black South Africans – the demographic majority Nigeria stoutly supported in the fight against white minority rule – would turn on them after securing freedom. However, this grievance is simplistic. It presumes that ordinary Black South Africans are in a socio-economic position to appreciate that history. Currently, they are not.

A Black president has served as the ultimate symbol of political freedom since Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment and became the country's first Black head of state in 1994. Yet majoritarian democracy has since unfolded within a deeply complex post-apartheid society. While the share of wealth held by white South Africans has declined, economic advancement among the majority-Black population has been weak, leaving millions at the margins. 

South Africa is mired in a growth crisis that has consigned its best economic years to the distant past. World Bank data shows that its annualised GDP growth peaked at 7.9% in 1964. Since then, the country has endured nine years of negative growth, including a 6.2% contraction in 2020. Consequently, per capita income remains below its 2007 peak. Today, over 8 million South Africans are unemployed, and nearly 60% of the population lives below the upper-middle-income poverty line.

Impoverished and unemployed Black South Africans are deeply angry about their stagnation. While they vent this frustration on African migrants – particularly Nigerians, whom they accuse of ‘stealing’ their jobs – scapegoating foreigners does not tell the whole story. Their anger also manifests in high crime rates and destructive civil unrest, earning South Africa the sobriquet of 'the protest capital of the world.' Ultimately, as the mid-17th-century English proverb notes, 'a hungry man is an angry man.' Widespread deprivation inevitably drives a society to rage.

Not unlike South Africa, Nigeria’s best years of economic growth also date back to a distant past. In the 2000s, Nigeria achieved a multi-year average growth rate of 6%. But since 2015, the country has endured two recessions and a persistently weak recovery. This period, deeply marred by intensifying ethnoreligious tensions in politics and governance, has seen historic peaks in unemployment and poverty rates. These dire economic straits earned the country the grim title of 'the poverty capital of the world' in 2018.

Under the compounding weight of economic deprivation, the Nigerian populace has grown increasingly desperate. In the North, the epicentre of national poverty, a radical religious sect has transformed into a lethal terrorist insurgency that has since splintered into equally violent factions. Today, this crisis has mutated further, with systemic kidnapping for ransom undermining security across every region of the country.

Just as post-apartheid South Africa has failed to deliver broadly shared economic gains, Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999 has been increasingly undermined by a breakdown in the rule of law and by deepening poverty since 2015. Rather than addressing these systemic challenges, Nigerian leaders have exacerbated them by neglecting national cohesion, which is indispensable for sustainable growth. Aso Rock Presidential Villa and the broader federal bureaucracy reflect the president’s ethnic bias during their tenure.

Nigeria has long welcomed foreign direct investment (FDI) from South Africa, yet volatile macroeconomic conditions have prompted major South African brands to exit the Nigerian market in recent years. In effect, while some South Africans display xenophobia towards Nigerian migrants, Nigeria itself has created a hostile environment for foreign capital, including that from South Africa. As history records, during the economic collapse of the early 1980s, Nigeria expelled about two million African migrants – over one million of them Ghanaians – who had been drawn by the country’s oil boom of the 1970s. The episode, remembered through the ubiquitous ‘Ghana Must Go’ bag, echoed earlier deportations of immigrants across West Africa.

Xenophobia is as inherently condemnable as ethnoreligious prejudice. In South Africa, the former targets foreign African nationals residing within its borders, while the latter, in Nigeria, drives citizens of the same nation to turn against one another along ethnic or religious lines. Both pathologies are fuelled by systemic failures in political leadership, which result in economic desperation.

The broader outrage across the continent stems from a deeply ingrained expectation of pan-African solidarity. Today, however, pan-Africanism has largely degenerated into a lazy slogan – a superficial way to avoid addressing governance failures within individual nation-states. At the continental level, leaders consistently parrot themes of unity and progress, yet their domestic agendas routinely produce the exact opposite.

Pan-Africanism was historically purposeful, serving as a vital rallying umbrella for securing the political independence of colonised African nations. Post-independence, however, the mandate shifted to building resilient domestic economies and forging genuine national unity. Today, initiatives such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) remain relevant only insofar as individual states successfully industrialise and position themselves to climb the global value chain. Until then, domestic economic failure will continue to manifest as social volatility and cross-border hostility.

Jide Akintunde is the Managing Editor of Financial Nigeria magazine and the author of Youth Breed: How Generations of Nigerian Youth Impact Their Country.