The Federal Government has condemned the renewed killings of Nigerians in South Africa, describing the incidents as a potential deliberate sample of extrajudicial violence by parts of the nation’s safety businesses.
The newest sufferer, Odueze Chimezie Odueze, was allegedly tortured to demise by personnel of the South African Police Service, SAPS, on Friday, October 9, 2026, at his residence in the Parklands space of Cape Town.
Odueze was reportedly arrested at a procuring centre on suspicion of possessing medication. The police subsequently took him to his residence to conduct a search, however no medication or different prohibited objects had been allegedly discovered.
Despite this, the officers allegedly subjected him to extreme torture, which resulted in his demise.
The incident got here barely every week after two African nationals, one reportedly a Nigerian, had been allegedly killed on the streets of Johannesburg.
Reacting to the incidents, Nigeria’s Consul-General in South Africa, Ambassador Ninikanwa O. Okey-Uche, in a press release issued on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, expressed concern over the recurring killings, saying that they had raised critical questions in regards to the security of Nigerians and different African nationals in the nation.
She mentioned the rising sample of alleged extrajudicial killings was changing into more and more troubling.
“The continuing pattern of extra-judicial killings of Nigerians is daily becoming more and more like a deliberate attempt by some elements in disregard to due processes of the South African laws,” she mentioned.
The Nigerian authorities known as on South African authorities to conduct thorough investigations into the killings and make sure that these accountable had been delivered to justice.
Okey-Uche harassed that allegations of prison conduct towards any particular person have to be dealt with by way of established authorized procedures fairly than violence or extrajudicial punishment.
“All should be granted fair hearing in a court of law and no one should take the laws into their hands,” she mentioned.
While urging South African authorities to make sure the prosecution of these discovered culpable, the consul-general appealed to Nigerians in the nation to stay calm, law-abiding and security-conscious amid reported xenophobic and Afrophobic assaults and threats towards overseas nationals.
She assured Nigerians that the Federal Government would proceed to press for the safety of their lives and rights, stressing that the security of Nigerians remained a precedence, significantly in South Africa.
