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Don’t own small shops in South Africa to avoid attacks – Buhari to Nigerians
Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, has advised his compatriots in South Africa against opening small shops in the country if such would trigger resentments from the local population.
Buhari who spoke during a joint press conference with Cyril Ramaphosa, his South African counterpart in Pretoria, attributed the continuing xenophobic attacks on Nigerians and other African nationals in the Rainbow Nation to competition “at very low levels.”
“It’s a question of competition at very low levels where there are barbers or they have small shops and they feel that it should belong exclusively to the indigenous people of that locality or that it is open to people from all over the world,” Buhari said.
“I think Nigerians know the stand of the leadership that when you are in Rome, you do what the Romans do. When you in a country, you study the people and the laws and you get yourself a line of business with what the authorities and people accept there.
“If you do anything outside the people’s agreement, eventually they will not accept it. This is a very well known thing. The competition in all countries with the growth of population especially in developing countries is going to be keener.
The president recalled that Nigerians have also faced similar issues in Ghana, which he said, is attributable to competition.
Ramaphosa in response, while encouraging more Nigerians to come and set up businesses in South Africa, promised to map out polices to help them establish bigger businesses that could create jobs and correct the imbalance of South Africa having big businesses in Nigeria and Nigerians having small businesses in South Africa.
“South Africa has a number of large corporations that operate in Nigerian markets. But in the South African market, many of them are small and medium businesses,” he said.
“We want to address this imbalance so that we have more slightly larger Nigerian companies coming to operate here and we have various incentives as a government. We will be available to them and make our ease of doing business easier.”
Buhari arrived South Africa on Wednesday on a state visit and has, alongside officials of his administration, been having consultations in a bid to strengthen ties with both countries. So far, 32 trade and cooperation agreements have been signed.
