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For alleged failure to provide genuine yellow fever vaccination documentation, South Africa Friday deported some 125 Nigerians that arrived the country on Thursday through South African Airways (SAA) and Arik Air.
THISDAY learnt that SAA returned 75 passengers to Nigeria while Arik Air brought back 50 passengers. Among those deported were Nigerians who have been living in South Africa for several years.
Reacting to the action of the South African government, Nigerian's major carrier Arik Air announced the suspension of its flights to that country.
In a statement issued by the airline and signed by its head of communications, Adebanji Ola, Arik said it has taken the decision to temporarily suspend all flight operations between Lagos, Nigeria, and Johannesburg, South Africa with immediate effect.
The insistence of South African government to demand yellow fever vaccination document, known as Yellow Fever card, from Nigerian passengers has been a recurrent controversial issue, which many Nigerians believe is a way to discourage citizens from Africa's most populous nation from visiting the country that shed off its apartheid regime in 1994.
The image-maker of South Africa Airways in Nigeria, Mr. Tope Awe, explained that the national carrier made efforts to ensure that its Nigerian passengers were not deported, including trying to authenticate their yellow fever vaccination documents, the country's government still insisted that those passengers that did not satisfy the expectations of the officials of South Africa's port health must be forced back to Nigeria.
An informed industry source told THISDAY that although the request for Yellow Card was not discriminatory of airline, it could be said to be discriminatory against some countries. The source wondered why some Nigerians resident in that country for some time now were also sent back home.
The source argued that South African government might have contacted the Port Health in Nigeria to be acquainted with the identity numbers of the Yellow Card for the officials to know which ones were not genuine.
The yellow fever vaccination was supposed to be administered by the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and other health centres in the local government councils which were supposed to issue yellow fever certification, but South Africa argued that most of the Yellow Cards were fake.
An industry operator told THISDAY that there has been a strain in the relationship between Nigeria and South Africa over the controversial vaccination and other visa and immigration issues.
In 2001, the then Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Kema Chikwe, was held hostage by the South African Port Health, which insisted that Chikwe must be vaccinated and quarantined, but the former Minister resisted it and the issue was later resolved by the Nigerian embassy in that country.
Earlier in 2000, former President Olusegun Obasanjo visited South Africa and as he addressed the business community in that country, he told them that he was aware of the way South Africa manhandled and humiliated Nigerians and treated them disrespectfully.
He, however, said he was not going to treat South Africans who wished to come to Nigeria that way but would rather facilitate their visa process, a promise that he kept and which succeeding governments also kept.
Yesterday, the aviation source disagreed with Obasanjo, saying, "Nigeria should introduce the quid pro quo, the principle of reciprocity, by also treating South African citizens who come to Nigeria in the same manner".