Nigeria’s acting High Commissioner to South Africa, Ambassador Temitope Ajayi, has disclosed that the Federal Government has repatriated nearly 592 Nigerians from South Africa, with more evacuees expected to arrive in the country in the coming days.

Speaking in a video shared on Arise News, Ajayi said over 1,000 Nigerians had so far registered their voluntary desire to return home from South Africa, with another batch of about 270 evacuees expected to arrive on Wednesday.

He explained that the mission had repatriated 258 Nigerians in the first batch and a further 66 in the second batch to Lagos over the past two weeks, and that the impending arrivals would push the cumulative number repatriated to approximately 592.

The evacuation exercise, approved by President Bola Tinubu, was launched following a wave of xenophobic attacks and anti-migrant hostility targeting foreign nationals, including Nigerians, in parts of South Africa.

The first batch of 258 returnees touched down at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on June 11 aboard a chartered Air Peace flight, while the second batch of 66 arrived a few days later on a ValueJet-operated flight facilitated by the airline’s chairman, Kunle Soname.

Ajayi had earlier disclosed that the operation involved a three-stage screening process coordinated with South African authorities, covering biometric identification, immigration clearance, and the issuance of emergency travel certificates for returnees without valid documents. He had also pushed back against claims by South African immigration officials that all the evacuees were undocumented, insisting that many Nigerians had been pushed into irregular status by long delays in South Africa’s permit renewal system rather than any wrongdoing on their part.

Officials of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, led by its chairman, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, along with the National Emergency Management Agency, the Nigeria Immigration Service, and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, have continued to coordinate the reception and documentation of returnees at the airport. The Federal Government has maintained that the evacuation will continue until all Nigerians who have indicated a desire to return from South Africa are safely brought home.

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