Ambassador Sola Enikanolaiye, Nigeria's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, is set to personally receive 268 Nigerians being evacuated from South Africa on Thursday morning. The evacuation comes in direct response to recent xenophobic attacks in the country that have left Nigerian communities shaken and displaced.
The government's move to bring citizens home signals a formal acknowledgment of the threat Nigerians have been facing on the ground in South Africa. With nearly 270 people on that flight, the human scale of this crisis is hard to ignore.
What happens to these returnees once they land, and what support awaits them, remains the bigger question.
Originally published by AllAfrica.