What is their offence? That they dared to dream of glory and profit beyond our borders, and having dreamt, they endeavoured to make real the visions of their heart.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said that Nigeria was fed up with repatriating the bodies of citizens killed in South Africa.
He made the statement in Abuja on Friday while condemning the latest xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa, adding that they would seek restoration and recompense for Nigerian victims.
Gbajabiamila said, “Let no one be left in any doubt, we will seek, and we will obtain by whatever means available, due restoration and recompense for all that has been lost in this latest conflagration and all the ones that have come before.
“We are committed to a sustained and special effort to see that justice is achieved for all our people who have suffered.
“We have heard the cries of our citizens, and we have witnessed their devastation; we will mourn for the dead and cry for the lost, but we will not stop there.
“Yet, today and too many a time, we are called to stand as pallbearers, bringing home to bury the bodies of our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, our children, savaged and decimated.
“What is their offence? That they dared to dream of glory and profit beyond our borders, and having dreamt, they endeavoured to make real the visions of their heart.
“We did not provoke nor do we deserve the violence that has been visited upon our people in South Africa.
“We reject entirely the obvious attempt to change the true narrative of events by casting the recently organised acts of violence as merely internecine conflict between gangs fighting for turf.
“Unless it is the position of South African Government that all Nigerians living in South Africa are gangsters and criminals, we demand that they reject these claims without equivocation.
“We will honour the lives of our fallen brothers by making sure that never again will our citizens’ inalienable right to life and liberty be so wantonly denied here at home or anywhere else in the world.”