The Advocacy Network on Religious and Cultural Coexistence, ANORACC, has called for the immediate recall and sack of Femi Fani-Kayode as Nigeria’s High Commissioner to South Africa or anywhere in the world.
The Chairman of the group, Odimegwu Onwumere made this statement in Port Harcourt Sunday, November 15, 2026. He said President Bola Tinubu should sack Fani-Kayode as Nigeria’s High Commissioner to South Africa, and he said it should happen now, not after another public row.
What the ANORACC is asking for is simple. “Remove Fani-Kayode. Put in a career diplomat who knows how to work quietly. Send Pretoria a clear signal that Nigeria is serious about the relationship,” Onwumere says, adding that “anything less is just waiting for the next embarrassment.”
He made the call the same day the Nigerian High Commission in Pretoria was asking for calm. The mission had gone on its verified X handle to urge restraint and reconciliation after the fight between Fani-Kayode and Vincent Magwenya, the spokesman for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It said it wanted cordial relations preserved, that the quarrel should have been left to diplomatic channels, and that Magwenya should show restraint. It also said the matter was closed to it, but if anyone wanted to escalate it, they were welcome to try. Onwumere says that is not a solution. It is a pause.
*The place where it all started was the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Tshwane, on Friday, November 13, 2026,” says the group.
“Ramaphosa was receiving letters of credence from 15 new envoys. The ceremony was on the South African Presidency’s YouTube channel.
“Fani-Kayode was near the end of the line. He says his introduction and speech were cut out, and the broadcast only returned when Ramaphosa was addressing the group.
“He says he raised it with Ramaphosa, who apologised and assured him all was well. He refused an SABC interview in protest.
“He put the complaint on X. Hours later the Presidency uploaded a full recording that included his speech. That should have closed it. It did not.”
Onwumere says the reason for his call is what happened after that. Magwenya replied that Fani-Kayode had falsely dragged the President into a matter he had nothing to do with, that in South Africa a president does not intervene in the day to day running of a public broadcaster and did not do so for him, that Ramaphosa had only pointed him to Sophie Mokoena, the SABC editor who could sort it out, and that he refused to speak to her. He called the public outburst grossly inappropriate for a minor operational issue that was misunderstood.
When the Nigerian mission kept insisting Ramaphosa had intervened, Magwenya fired back again. “A lie remains a lie even when it is institutionalised, he said. There was no intervention from the President or the Presidency, and there never would be. Read the constitution, read the SABC editorial code, stop disgracing yourself and your country.”
Clayson Monyela, South Africa’s head of public diplomacy, added his own voice. He told Fani-Kayode he was actually live on SABC News, and that X was not the place to raise diplomatic complaints, big or small. He urged him to meet the SABC and build a respectful, professional relationship. The Nigerian mission hit back, calling Magwenya the disgrace and no one else, accusing him of insolence and ignorance, and reminding everyone that Magwenya had once described Presidents Bola Tinubu and John Mahama as peddlers of fake news when they raised concerns about xenophobia. Magwenya then told the mission to peddle its lies as it wished and to learn restraint and diplomacy. By Sunday morning, two of Africa’s biggest countries were not talking about trade or visas or the safety of Nigerians. They were trading insults on a timeline.
That is how Onwumere says the damage was done. Not by a single mistake, but by the way it was handled. He says, “A quiet note to DIRCO would have fixed a broadcast glitch. A private meeting with the SABC would have cleared the air. Instead, a complaint became a public fight, a fight became a war of words about who lied, and a war of words became a story about Nigeria disgracing itself,” Onwumere says, adding, “that is Fani-Kayode’s pattern. He does not calm things down. He turns them up. He does not settle a matter behind closed doors. He wants the crowd to see it. And every time he gets the crowd, Nigeria pays for it in the room where real decisions are made.”
Onwumere is not alone in that worry. On the same Sunday, the Nigerian Law Society, through its Executive Secretary, Dr Tonye Clinton Jaja, asked Tinubu to redeploy Fani-Kayode to another country. The lawyers said the move would help stop an escalation that could expose Nigerians in South Africa to xenophobic attacks.
They said the 14 other diplomats at the ceremony might have had similar complaints, but they used diplomatic channels. Fani-Kayode, they said, broke protocol by going straight to the public domain without exhausting those channels. They cited Sections 171(1) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution, which give the President power over ambassadorial appointments, and asked Tinubu to use it. Onwumere goes further than redeployment. He says sack him outright.
The stakes, Onwumere argues, are too high for this kind of drama. In September 2026 the National Assembly suspended all official visits to South Africa and boycotted South African-hosted legislative activities until further notice, after what it called continuing xenophobic attacks against Nigerians and other Africans. By July 2026 Nigeria said it had evacuated 1,490 citizens from South Africa through five government-sponsored Air Peace flights.
The Federal Government has put the number of Nigerians killed in Afrophobic attacks since June 2022 at about 90, with fresh attacks and displacement in 2026. At a meeting in Abuja in July, official records cited by Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sola Enikanolaiye, put the figure at 98 killed since 2022, five of them in 2026 alone.
Enikanolaiye reminded South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola, that Nigeria’s financial commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle was estimated at more than $60 billion, plus the nationalisation of British Petroleum, scholarships, and shelter given to South African leaders. That history is why the hurt runs deep. Nigeria paid a price for South Africa’s freedom, and now its people are being killed on South African streets, with no one convicted for any of it.
According to Onwumere, “Fani-Kayode got to Pretoria on Sunday, October 25, 2026, saying he would rebuild the bridge of friendship and protect Nigerians there. He formally presented copies of his letters to Monyela at DIRCO on October 30.
“Less than three weeks later he was being told by two senior South African officials to learn restraint, to stop using social media for diplomacy, and to stop disgracing his country.”
“If this is week three,* Onwumere asks, “what does month three look like? What happens when a trader is attacked in Johannesburg, when a student is picked up in Pretoria, when a mother in Durban is begging for help?
“Will the High Commission be quietly working DIRCO, the police, and the Presidency, or will it be drafting another long thread about contempt and disdain?
“A country that has already flown 1,490 of its people home cannot afford an envoy who wants applause more than results.”
So Onwumere’s message to Abuja is blunt. Pull Fani-Kayode out. He said, “Put in someone who knows that an ambassador is heard in the room, not loud outside it. Or keep him, keep defending every outburst, keep calling every rebuke an insult to Nigeria, and keep waiting for the next embarrassment.”
The mission says it wants reconciliation. Onwumere says “reconciliation starts at home, with the courage to admit the wrong man was sent to Africa’s most sensitive posting and to take him out. If Nigeria ignores this call, the next row will not be about a livestream. It will be bigger, and by then the damage will be much harder to fix.”
