House Seeks Compensation for Victims of SA Violence
Nearly two decades of recurring violence against Nigerians in South Africa moved from the streets to the floor of the National Assembly on Tuesday, as the House of Representatives resolved to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the human and economic losses suffered by its citizens and to press for compensation from Pretoria.
The resolution followed a motion sponsored by Babajimi Benson, who represents Ikorodu Federal Constituency of Lagos State and chairs the House Committee on Defence. Presided over by the Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas, the motion was adopted by a voice vote after receiving broad support from lawmakers across party lines.
Benson anchored his argument on a striking gap. Despite years of killings, arson and displacement, he said, Nigeria has never produced a verified, official record of what its nationals have lost, and that failure has quietly undermined every diplomatic protest Abuja has made. “Condemnation and diplomatic protests without a corresponding institutional effort to comprehensively document the losses suffered by Nigerians have denied the Federal Government and the National Assembly an authoritative evidential basis for policy formulation, legislative intervention and sustained diplomatic negotiations,” he told the chamber.
He traced the pattern of violence through major outbreaks in 2008, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021, noting that each episode produced the same cycle of diplomatic tension, emergency evacuation and fresh assurances from the South African government that were rarely followed by lasting protection. Supporting the motion, Paschal Agbodike, of the All Progressives Congress in Anambra, went further, urging the Federal Government to compensate citizens who returned home after losing everything.
The House mandated its Committees on Integration and Cooperation in Africa and Diaspora, and on Foreign Affairs, to document the casualties, property losses and economic damage from both past and recent attacks, compile an inventory of properties abandoned by fleeing Nigerians, and recommend diplomatic, legal and policy measures to secure accountability and possible compensation. The committees are expected to report within four weeks.
The timing is not accidental. The probe lands in the middle of one of the largest emergency repatriation efforts Nigeria has mounted in years. Since June, the Federal Government, working with the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons and the airline Air Peace, has flown home hundreds of distressed citizens in phased operations. Air Peace confirmed it had airlifted 801 Nigerians across three humanitarian missions in June alone, moving 262 people on June 11, 271 on June 30 and 268 in a later flight. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its spokesman Kimiebi Ebienfa, said a fifth phase on July 15 brought the cumulative figure to 1,409 returnees, with more than 1,000 Nigerians having registered for voluntary return.
The human toll behind those flights is contested but sobering. The Nigerian community in South Africa has said at least 105 of its members have been killed since 2019, adding that more than 20 Nigerians died between January 2026 and mid year in incidents involving security personnel, criminal attacks or suspected extrajudicial actions. Those figures have not been independently verified by South African authorities, and several cases remain under investigation. Among the recent deaths cited by returnees was a Nigerian businessman known as Big Joe, reportedly shot outside his shop in Witbank, Mpumalanga Province. The renewed hostility has been driven in part by organised campaigns against foreign nationals, including the movement known as Operation Dudula, which has targeted migrants it accuses of taking jobs and straining public services.
Much of the emotional weight of Benson’s motion rested on history. Nigeria was among the foremost external backers of the campaign against apartheid, chairing the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid from 1972 until democratic rule arrived in 1994, and campaigning as early as 1961 for South Africa’s suspension from the Commonwealth. Ordinary Nigerians carried part of the cost. In 1976, following the Soweto uprising, the government established the Southern Africa Relief Fund, popularly called the Mandela Tax, which raised about 10.5 million dollars within six months through contributions from students and salary deductions from civil servants. By the end of apartheid, Nigeria’s cumulative financial, economic and diplomatic support was estimated at about 61 billion dollars, a figure fact checkers at DUBAWA rated as mostly true while cautioning that it reflects decades of layered support rather than a single payment.
That history now sits awkwardly beside the economics of the present. Nigeria became South Africa’s largest trading partner in 2006, and bilateral trade, which stood at just 16.5 million dollars in 1999, has since grown into the region’s most significant commercial corridor, valued at roughly 2.16 billion dollars in early 2026. More than 100 South African companies operate in Nigeria, among them MTN, Shoprite, MultiChoice and Standard Bank, with MTN alone having paid over 285 million dollars for its operating licence in 2001. Nigerian firms such as Access Bank and Paystack have in turn expanded southward. The two economies, valued by the International Monetary Fund at above 440 billion dollars for South Africa and over 330 billion dollars for Nigeria in nominal terms, together anchor the continent’s integration agenda under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Whether the lawmakers’ four week inquiry can convert moral history and commercial leverage into concrete redress remains uncertain. Previous outbreaks produced condemnations and evacuations but no documented compensation for victims. What is clear is that, for the first time, the National Assembly is attempting to attach hard figures to a grievance Nigeria has carried, largely undocumented, for close to twenty years.