Xenophobic: Nigerians Boycott Trips To South Africa

Reports have been making rounds that some Nigerians have being boycotting trips to South Africa following the recent Xenophobic attack on foreigners in the country.

Recall that the House of Representatives on Thursday described the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama’s denial of its invitation as an insult.

The house revealed this after the Federal Government revealed that Nigeria and South Africa would set up a commission to put a lasting end to xenophobia.

In spite of the South Africa president apologizing to Nigerians, there had been reports that Nigerians are not buying tickets to South Africa, except in special cases.

A travel agent while speaking on the situation said, “I haven’t sold tickets to Johannesburg for two weeks.”

“I have not booked a single ticket to Johannesburg in the last two weeks,” a travel agent, who did not want to be named, told The PUNCH.

“Nobody is going there at the moment. It is as if there is a total boycott except it is extremely important. Since the problem between Nigeria and South Africa began, the only people travelling are those that had booked their flights long before now and students that need to return to school and have no choice but to resume”

Another travel agent based in Lagos stated that the situation is getting serious that special travel packages that were given to tourists had either been cancelled or diverted to some other destinations as people were no longer interested.

He stated that Nigerian tourists are changing destinations from South Africa to Dubai.

According to the agent, Nigerian tourists are changing their vacation destinations to Dubai, Mauritius and other places.

“There are people with pending tickets that have requested change of airline or destination. Even people scheduled to travel; some have said they no longer want to travel to South Africa,” he said.