President Muhammadu Buhari Monday went down memory lane, recalling roles played by Nigeria in engendering majority rule in South Africa, and ending the apartheid segregationist policy, a statement by his spokesman, Mr. Femi Adesina, has said.
Receiving in audience Mr Jeff Radebe, Special Envoy of President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa at State House, Abuja, the President recounted that he was a junior military officer to Generals Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo, who were military heads of state at different times in the mid to late 1970s.
According to President Buhari, \u201cGoing back to historical antecedents, we made great sacrifices for South Africa to become a free state. I was a junior officer to Gen. Murtala Muhammad, and Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. They were not operating in a democracy, but they got Nigerians to support them in the bid to see a free South Africa.\u201d
\u201cOur leadership was quite committed to the cause. We made sacrifices, which younger people of today may not know. During my last visit to South Africa with the late President Robert Mugabe, it was very emotional, as Mugabe spoke about Nigeria\u2019s contribution to free South Africa,\u201d he noted.
The President extended appreciation to President Ramaphosa, through the Special Envoy, \u201cfor coming to explain to us what happened in South Africa recently, leading to killing and displacement of foreigners.\u201d
President Buhari responded to profuse apologies from the South African President, pledging that relationship between the two countries \u201cwill be solidified,\u201d while describing the xenophobic attacks as \u201cvery unfortunate.\u201d
Mr Radebe apologized on behalf of his President for what he called \u201cacts of criminality and violence\u201d that recently occurred, adding that \u201csuch do not represent our value system, nor those of the larger number of South Africans.\u201d
He said South Africa was an integral part of Africa, and is fully committed to peace and integration of the continent.
The Special Envoy disclosed that 10 people died during the attacks \u2013 two Zimbabweans and eight South Africans. He said there was no Nigerian casualty.
He added that South Africa remains eternally grateful for the role Nigeria played in ending apartheid, and hoped that the coming visit of the Nigerian President would solidify relationship between the two countries once again.
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President Muhammadu Buhari Monday went down memory lane, recalling roles played by Nigeria in engendering majority rule in South Africa, and ending the apartheid segregationist policy, a statement by his spokesman, Mr. Femi Adesina, has said. Receiving in audience Mr Jeff Radebe, Special Envoy of President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa at State House, Abuja, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}