President Muhammadu Buhari has
advised Nigerians living in South Africa not to operate small businesses if the
indigenes will not accept them.
In a joint media briefing with
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday, Buhari urged Nigerians to
abide by the law in any country they choose to settle.
“We have discussed it at great
length with the president on one to one basis. For those Nigerians that are
here or elsewhere, you can recall what happened in Ghana of recent.
“It’s a question of competition
at very low levels where there are barbers or they have small shops and they
feel that it should belong exclusively to the indigenous people of that
locality or that it is open to people from all over the world.
“I think Nigerians know the stand
of the leadership that when you are in Rome, you do what the Romans do. When
you in a country, you study the people and the laws and you get yourself a line
of business with what the authorities and people accept there.
“If you do anything outside the
people’s agreement, eventually they will not accept it. This is a very well
known thing. The competition in all countries with the growth of population
especially in developing countries is going to be keener.
“It means that our respective
security agencies must be very alert. They must infiltrate the community, know
their thinking and make sure that they don’t allow violence to escalate.”
In his remarks, Ramaphosa said
his administration would create incentives to attract “slightly larger Nigerian
companies” to improve job creation and correct the present imbalance of having
big South African businesses in Nigeria and smaller Nigerian businesses in
South Africa.
“We want to welcome more Nigerian
businesses to operate in our space. South Africa has a number of large
corporations that operate in Nigerian markets; in the South African market,
many of them are small and medium businesses.
“We want to address this
imbalance so that we have more slightly larger Nigerian companies coming to
operate here and we have various incentives as a government. We will be
available to them and make our ease of doing business easier.”
Both countries signed 32 trade
and cooperation agreements as part of activities to calm frayed diplomatic
nerves.
In September, mobs armed with
makeshift weapons attacked businesses and homes owned by foreigners, leading to
at least 10 deaths, dozens of injuries and up to 400 arrests.
In response, Nigeria repatriated
around 600 of its citizens living in South Africa.
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