Towards a resilient Pan-Africanism: Tackling the scourge of Afrophobia, By Yusuf Tuggar

These are but a very few of the reasons why Nigerians cannot fathom why they and other Black Africans are being targeted in South Africa. Call it Afrophobia, which may be better description than Xenophobia (as non-black Africans appear to be exempted) or the more euphemistic framing – anti-migration protests, it is wrong and must be condemned. It is also ill-timed, coming at a period when Nigeria’s foreign policy agenda of Strategic Autonomy precisely relies on Diaspora and robustness in assuring the dignity of Nigerian’s abroad as one of its 4D pillars. Yet at the same time, it is important to understand what exactly is going on in South Africa and put it into context.

The President of the Bridge Club, my dear friend and brother, Abdulhakeem Mustapha (SAN), members of the Executive Committee of The Bridge Club, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I wish to begin by expressing how honoured I am to be invited to serve as chairman of this occasion by such an esteemed body of professionals and business leaders. Quite often in Africa, we make the mistake of failing to tap the experience of former office holders; the moment you depart, it’s out of sight, out of mind. Or worse, you become anathema for the simple crime of no longer having an official designation.

However, many of the polities that we look up to have devised ways of embracing and transiting public office
holders into think tanks (whether affiliated to political parties or standalone), to share and benefit from their experiences in policy conception and implementation. Therein lies one of the ways we can improve on putting theory into praxis. I therefore commend the Bridge Club for showing the path in this regard.

I would like to equally thank the Bridge Club for choosing the all-important topic of Xenophobia and Pan-Africanism as the theme of this year’s grand event. Who better to interrogate this subject than the erudite and peripatetic Professor PLO Lumumba? Africa is proud of you Prof. And my sister and former colleague in the Nigerian legislature, the Right Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who through sheer grit and determination, has built the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) into a globally recognised agency championing the dignity of Nigerians abroad. We are equally proud of you, chair and thank you for your service to the nation.

I belong to a generation of Nigerians whose worldview was shaped by the struggle against apartheid and the liberation of Africa from racist regimes. In secondary school, we had Mine Boy, Tell Freedom and Cry the Beloved Country as literature textbooks. Following the Soweto massacre in June 1976, many of us lived with its victims in our boarding schools and shared first-hand experiences, after Nigeria adopted them as its own, with full scholarships. This gesture extended to Namibians, Angolans and others under the yoke of oppression. A singular act of kindness by Mrs Maude Obanye (wife of a Nigerian diplomat) in donating money to the Soweto victims, set off a deluge that became the South African Relief Fund, which Nigerians competed to contribute to.

Our Ambassador Leslie Harriman of blessed memory chaired the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid and we hosted the World Conference Against Apartheid that framed it as a threat against international peace and security, and made it a global imperative. We did this at a time when we were financially constrained,
due to a slump in oil prices in 1976. And leading by example, Nigeria as the host, nationalised Barclays Bank and British Petroleum, at great risk of offending some of our Western partners. Again, this was a time when policy conception and implementation benefited from the intellectual heft of our think tanks and past and present public office holders; the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), among others, were tasked with scenario-building to weigh the pros and cons of such a course of action.

Theory was successfully put into praxis. These are but a very few of the reasons why Nigerians cannot fathom why they and other Black Africans are being targeted in South Africa. Call it Afrophobia, which may be better description than Xenophobia (as non-black Africans appear to be exempted) or the more euphemistic framing – anti-migration protests, it is wrong and must be condemned. It is also ill-timed, coming at a period when Nigeria’s foreign policy agenda of Strategic Autonomy precisely relies on Diaspora and robustness in assuring the dignity of Nigerian’s abroad as one of its 4D pillars. Yet at the same time, it is important to understand what exactly is going on in South Africa and put it into context.

First, there are endogenous factors at play. Those who laid the foundations of Apartheid were very intelligent individuals, strategic thinkers, whose influence continues to be felt globally. It began with the systemic creativity of Lord Frederick Lugard, a name well known to Nigerians and Ugandans. Lugard birthed cultural segregation to answer the native question – how a few thousand colonial officers and settlers can rule over millions. The black populace was kept separate along tribal lines. The concept of the Sabo and Sabon Gari was so effective, such that Mallam Ibrahim Gusau (later to become Nigeria’s First Republic minister of agriculture) was arrested and sanctioned by the colonial authorities for mingling with his Igbo and Yoruba compatriots in Sabon Gari. Worst of all, he was found to be in possession of Nnamdi Azikiwe’s ‘seditious’ West African Pilot newspaper.

Jan Smuts improved on this system to become the father of institutional segregation. By all accounts a very clever man, Smuts was one of the authors of the League of Nations Charter and chancellor of the University of Cambridge to boot. By the time it got to PW Botha’s Constellation of States, Apartheid was dividing South
Africans not just by race, but also by class and economics. The Homelands made everyone a foreigner from within and without. So, you can see, it was a segregation spectrum with varying degrees from Lugard to Botha, from Nigeria to South Africa, that has left a long-lasting psychological scar. It therefore brings South African exceptionalism into question, in this regard. And context is not justification.

Nigerian thinkers and scholars helped chart a course for dealing with the colonial trauma. Professor Kenneth Dike revolutionised historiography by proving the empiricism of the oral tradition and other methods of studying African history. He disproved Hegel’s declaration that Africa had no history or was ‘unhistorical’ prior to contact with enlightened outsiders. Such theoretical constructions provided the scaffolding for colonisation and ultimately for apartheid and its deep-seated scarring. Dike’s Africanist history developed
offshoots and spread across the continent from its Ibadan roots. We require such rigour and intellectual heft to tackle the Camp of The Saint’s level anti-migrant fear that exists well beyond South Africa.

Which brings me to the second part of today’s discussion – Pan-Africanism as a thesis, if Afrophobia is antithetical. Ironically, South Africa was expected to be to Africa what Japan was to Asia. In the 1970s and 80s, Japan was considered the challenger to the US’ global economic supremacy and ended up attracting punitive tariffs. Japan responded by diversifying its manufacturing base into other Asian countries. For instance, Mitsubishi set up textile manufacturing in Bangladesh. The net effect was a flying geese effect, with Japan diversifying and leading other Asian countries or tigers into manufacturing and development.

South Africa, with its advanced manufacturing base was well positioned to do that for Africa, but it missed the opportunity because of Apartheid. Here again, we had an era in which great minds like Adebayo Adedeji and Malawi’s Thandika Mkandariwe emphasised the need for manufacturing finished goods and market integration as the path to decolonisation and development. Instead, most African countries chose the Bretton Woods prescriptions of the Berg Report and the rabbit hole of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that sought to discourage the global South from manufacturing and instead resign them to being net exporters of raw materials and agricultural products.

They understood that Africa could not develop without manufacturing finished goods and integrating its markets. Adedeji came up with the concept of the African Economic Community (AEC), the precursor to today’s African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA). Beyond the advantage of manufacturing finished goods to improve terms of trade (otherwise more cashew nuts would be exchanged for the same tractor as societies
gentrify and increase their demand for manufactured goods), Mkandariwe reminded us that trade also includes selling things to acquire technology.

So, there are three ironies today: 1. The path to Pan-Africanism is through the continental free trade area. 2. As the father of capitalism Adam Smith once opined, “the free circulation of labour is the foundation of any free trade system.” 3. The AfCFTA is headed by a South African.

In closing, we have to also look at exogenous factors at play. Who funds March & March and Operation Dudala? Are the online hashtags that are serving as rallying points for anti-migrant sentiments organic or engendered from outside South Africa? South Africa was accused of racism towards white farmers when Nigeria was accused of the persecution of Christians. Are these a coincidence? The partnership of Nigeria and South Africa is too important for the continent’s future. When we worked together, we created NEPAD. And let us not forget that even in recent times, South Africa used its 2025 Presidency of the G20 to support Nigeria’s efforts towards joining the group. South Africa designated Abuja as the host of the Africa Outreach Meeting on Industry and Agriculture in November 2025.

I eagerly await Professor Lumumba’s keynote address.

Yusuf Maitama Tuggar was until recently Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs minister.

This is the text of remarks made as the Chairman of the Bridge Club’s 2026 Grand end-of-year event with the theme of xenophobia and Pan-Africanism.