SA-Nigeria rivalry still ugly

Friction at many levels as pageants, sport used as weapons.

- Lagos

DIPLOMACY: INTERVENTION NEEDED FOR NIGERIAN BASKETBALL SIDE TO COME TO SOUTH AFRICA

Without a last-minute diplomatic intervention, Nigeria's youth basketball team would have missed an international competition in South Africa last month.

Nigerian officials claimed South Africa had tried to stop the under-18 team from participating - the latest row in long-simmering tension between the two African economic heavyweights.

The discord has spilled over into sports, music, ride-sharing apps and even beauty contests.

But Olawale Olusola, an international relations expert at the Obafemi Awolowo University in southwest Nigeria, said ties had been strained for decades.

Friction grew with the end of apartheid and South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, when Nigeria was ruled by a military government.

In 1996, anti-apartheid hero and then-president of South Africa Nelson Mandela criticised the Nigerian authorities' execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others.

Nigeria's military head of state General Sani Abacha retaliated by boycotting the African Cup of Nations in South Africa that year, sparking a tit-for-tat rivalry still simmering today.

"Nigeria-South Africa relations have been at a very low ebb," Olusola said.

In 2019, a wave of violence against Nigerians in South Africa added further strain. Mobs descended on foreigner-owned stores, looting and destroying properties.