Fifth Evacuation Flight Set As Nigeria Pulls Citizens Out Of Restive South Africa
Another Air Peace aircraft will lift off from Lagos on Tuesday afternoon bound for Johannesburg, and by the early hours of Wednesday it is expected to touch down at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport with 270 Nigerians who have chosen to leave South Africa behind. It is the latest run in an evacuation exercise that has quietly become one of the largest voluntary repatriations Nigeria has mounted in years, driven by a wave of anti-immigrant violence that shows little sign of easing.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the schedule in a statement issued on Monday by its spokesperson, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa. According to the ministry, the chartered aircraft will depart Lagos for Johannesburg at 3.30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7, load the returnees, and begin the journey home at midnight.
“In continuation of the ongoing evacuation of our nationals from South Africa, the Air Peace aircraft deployed for the process is expected to depart Lagos tomorrow, Tuesday 7 July, 2026, for Johannesburg, South Africa at 3.30 p.m.,” the statement read. “The aircraft will depart Johannesburg for Lagos with 270 returnees at 12.00 midnight, and the estimated time of arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos is 5.00 a.m. on Wednesday, 8 July, 2026, all things being equal.”
The Wednesday arrival will be the fifth government-arranged flight in an operation that has gathered pace since June. By the ministry’s own count, the earlier batches have already brought home hundreds of citizens. The first, some 258 evacuees, arrived on June 11. A privately funded flight, paid for by a Nigerian philanthropist, returned 66 stranded nationals on June 24. A second government flight brought back 269 on June 30, followed by a further batch that landed on July 3. Air Peace, which has operated the charters using a Boeing 777-200, put the total ferried across its first three missions at 801, describing the exercise as its 16th humanitarian intervention.
The trigger for the exodus is a fresh surge of anti-immigrant protests that erupted across South African cities around June 30, spearheaded by citizen movements such as Operation Dudula and the March and March group. The demonstrators, some of whom turned out in Durban in traditional Zulu warrior dress carrying spears and shields, set an unofficial deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave the country. Though organisers insist the protests target illegal migration rather than any single nationality, foreign nationals from several African countries have again borne the brunt, with reports of looting and attacks on foreign-owned shops and homes.
For many returnees, the cost has been steep. Some who arrived on earlier flights spoke of abandoning businesses, cars and homes built up over more than a decade, selling off what they could for a fraction of its worth. The government has said it is now documenting those losses. The Acting High Commissioner to South Africa, Ambassador Temitope Ajayi, said the mission had asked departing Nigerians to record their abandoned assets so the matter could be taken up with Pretoria in a push for compensation.
The violence has also claimed lives. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, confirmed the deaths of two Nigerians, Musa Yunana Joe and Charles Iroegbu, and said Abuja had demanded that South African authorities investigate the killings and bring those responsible to justice. In a fresh advisory issued on Monday, she urged Nigerians who feel unsafe to take up the remaining seats, warning that the final evacuation flight is expected to reach South Africa on July 10.
“While lost properties and investments could be replaced, lives could not,” she cautioned, in a message directed at citizens still weighing whether to stay or go.
The government has been at pains to dispel a persistent rumour that officials demanded money from those seeking passage. The ministry stated flatly that every special flight is fully funded by the Federal Government “and at no cost to the returnees,” dismissing what it called false allegations against staff of the Nigerian Mission.
Nigeria is not alone in pulling its people out. Ghana, Uganda and other African states have moved to repatriate their nationals amid the same unrest, a reminder that the friction in Africa’s most industrialised economy carries consequences well beyond its borders. South Africa, grappling with unemployment above 30 per cent, high crime and strained public services, has long been both a magnet for migrant labour and a flashpoint for periodic outbreaks of xenophobic anger. Nigerians have featured prominently in earlier episodes, notably the deadly attacks of 2019 that prompted an earlier round of Air Peace evacuations and a sharp cooling of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
That history hangs over the current crisis. For Abuja, the repatriation is being framed as proof of what officials repeatedly call the bond between citizen and state. On the ground in Lagos, agencies including the National Emergency Management Agency, the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, the Nigeria Immigration Service and the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons have been receiving each flight for documentation and profiling, with pledges of skills training and reintegration support to help returnees rebuild. Whether those promises hold, and whether Pretoria answers the call for compensation and justice, will shape how this chapter is remembered long after the last flight lands.