He said the Consulate had, however, protested the indiscriminate arrest and detention of Nigerians at the deportation camp.

“I have had meetings with the South African officials from Lindela repatriation camp where I expressed my reservation and protestation about the indiscriminate arrest and deportation of Nigerians without recourse to the missions.

“The issue of intimidation and indiscriminate arrest of Nigerians is of great concern to us,” Ukwu said.
He said the Mission would no longer accept situation where Nigerians were treated with great ignominy.

“It is unacceptable to us the generalisation of Nigerians as being bad by the South African authority because there are 99.9 per cent Nigerians who are doing genuine businesses who are contributing massively to the economic growth of South Africa in all spheres.

“Such bad treatment and generalisation arising from the very negligible number of unpatriotic Nigerians who engage in unwholesome activity is therefore not acceptable to us at all,” the Consul General said.

Ukwu said the Consulate had learnt that a good number of Nigerians were deported for not having their passport on them as at the time of arrest and were not given the opportunity to retrieve such from their homes after their arrest.

“Nigerian officials do not harass Southern Africans or any other foreign nationals living in Nigeria as they do here.

“We are not saying South African officials should not do their duties, but we are saying there is no point to unduly intimidate and arrest innocent Nigerian engaged in legitimate businesses just because he is not carrying his passport as at the time of arrest.

“It is even worse now because of the sensitive feature of the ECOWAS passport,” he said.
Ukwu said he had met with the South African immigration officials and agreed that, henceforth, the two Nigerian missions should be contacted whenever a Nigerian or anybody who claimed to be a Nigerian was arrested.

According to him this is to enable the mission to verify the authenticity or otherwise of such individual’’s identity and alleged offence before any action was taken.

“This is so because we have found situations where other nationals claiming to be Nigerians and carrying a Nigerian passport,” Ukwu said.

The Consul General said he also planned to have a meeting with the police chief to discuss the issue of indiscriminate arrest of Nigerians.

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