Foreign
Nigerians killed regularly in S’Africa without justice – Community president
Frank
Mr Chukwunta was a Nigerian national who lived in an area called Midrand in Johannesburg. The unfortunate incident that led to his death happened on December 7, 2024. Based on th e information we received from his partner, he was coming back from work with his partner. They already drove inside the complex when some guys blocked the entrance. He told them to move their vehicle so that he could have access to the parking lot. They refused, and that led to an exchange of words. When he saw that they remained adamant, he walked towards the estate security post to lodge a complaint. As he walked in that direction, the four guys followed him. They stopped him and a fight started. The four guys pounced on him. They inflicted heavy injuries on him. When his partner, who was waiting in the car for him, did not see him, she walked towards the security post and saw him on the ground, bleeding. She started calling for help but nobody came. This was for almost an hour, according to her. When there was no help from passersby, she called her father on the phone. Her father came to the scene of the incident. That was how they rushed Mr Chukuwnta to the general hospital on Saturday. He died on Tuesday which was December 10.
Was he shot by the South Africans?
He died as a result of loss of blood because of the heavy injuries on his skull. They hit a brick on his head. This opened a big wound on his skull. As a result of this, he succumbed to death.
Is his partner a Nigerian or South African?
She is a South African lady. Her name is Miss Lumka.
What steps did she take after the incident?
She opened a case at the Midrand Police Station. An investigation team was assigned to the case. I must commend their swiftness in tactfully responding to it. With the evidence from the footage from the complex that revealed the car, and the faces of the guys, the police made arrests. They (the suspects) were charged with murder.
We believe in the fairness of justice. It was a life that was taken and those guys were not supposed to be released on bail. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, they took a life. But we saw that in the proceeding of the court, there were areas where there was a breach of communication between the attorney who was supposed to represent the family and the community and Mr Julius’ partner. They had the right by law to oppose it (bail) or present their lawyers to defend the matter. That was expected. But they (suspects) were not supposed to be granted bail. Unfortunately, three of them presented their reasons and there was not much persuasion or refusal from the prosecuting counsel. With the little experience I have in the legal and judicial system in South Africa, the prosecutor has the right to refuse the bail to be granted. If the magistrate now overrules the decision of the prosecutor, that becomes a different case. . There might be a flight risk.
Why do you think the suspects are a flight risk?
We realised that three of those four guys were originally from Zimbabwe although they have South Africa’s residence permits and identity documents. This means they are South Africans and Zimbabweans. Granting them bail may risk the possibility of them travelling back to Zimbabwe. If that happens, the case will die. This was where the leadership of the Nigerian community felt disappointed not necessarily from the prosecutor.
Were the four of them granted bail?
What nationality is the prosecutor?
The prosecutor was a South African lawyer. But the watching brief attorney was a Nigerian. In the South African law system, when a community or a private body is interested in a matter, the law allows for an attorney to be part of the deliberations, especially having a right of communication and the right of briefing. One of our Nigerian attorneys was standing as watching brief over the matter. In that case, the family of the victim and the Nigerian community in South Africa suffered because a large number of Nigerians have been victims of cases like this even in the hands of the authorities. That was where our pains and grief came from.
Have there been other cases like this in which Nigerians were killed without getting justice?
In fact, I’m working on trying to stand before the Senate or the House of Representatives to tell them about many of these sad experiences we have had. I want to make a formal report to the high commission and the consulate. If I have to be specific with you, between November last year and December this year, we have had between 15 and 20 Nigerians who have died under this similar kind of death that could have been avoided.
Let me mention just a few. Last week, a young Nigerian man was buried in Cape Town. He was arrested by the police authorities. He died in the holding cell due to the injuries inflicted on him by the police. Earlier this year in May, I drove to Northern Cape, another province in South Africa, which required a six-hour drive to report a case to the commissioner of police. The case was about police officers who searched his house and suffocated him while trying to search his house. He died in the hands of the police. There was an autopsy report and they refused to give it to us. Another Nigerian died in Johannesburg in the hands of the police. I was there at the scene of the incident and at the police station where he died. Nigerians came out en masse to protest.
Have you been able to reach out to the high commission and the consulate about all these atrocities by South Africans?
We have tried to reach out to the government through them but they have not done enough. I understand the diplomatic ties and procedures. But, I’m expecting more steps to be taken by them such as media briefings to let South Africans understand that our lives matter. A person is considered innocent until proven guilty. When they arrest anybody, we are not stopping them from letting the person face the wrath of the law if found guilty. But we are against letting Nigerians die through intimidation and brutalisation in the name of hatred against Nigerians. Many Nigerians have died and their bodies repatriated without their families knowing the cause of their deaths. This is why our government needs to come to our rescue. We want the Nigerian government to address this with the South African authorities. The Presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should understand that we are not just making up these stories. There is evidence. There are cases with the police and the courts lying there without being attended to and with no legal representation to fight for justice.
Is it true that South Africans attack Nigerians because they think Nigerians take their jobs and marry their ladies?
To be emphatically clear about this, xenophobic attacks and hatred for foreign nationals in South Africa are not only against Nigerians. There is a kind of general hate for foreign nationals whether Africans or Westerners by South Africans, but Nigerians are on top of the list. I may not be able to explain what led to the hatred but the allegation that Nigerians are taking up their jobs is false. Well, in terms of marriage, when love happens, love happens. Nigerian men are lovable and caring. They know how to take good care of women. That is the reason I think South African women prefer Nigerian men to their men. But when it comes to jobs, that’s not true. I can tell you that 90 per cent of Nigerian men in South Africa are self-employed. They build their companies, develop their businesses, and grow their careers. They also employ some of these South Africans to work with them. You can only count a few Nigerians who work for the government or industries. Nigerians are mostly into business; they are medical professionals, lawyers, and others. Some are students, and others are involved in carpentry and hair styling. They open their shops. Statistics have proven that the percentage of South Africans in employment is higher than the percentage of foreign nationals put together. But still, you will hear complaints that they are taking their jobs. This rumour has been carried by South Africans who probably are lazy or trying to put up a defence or an excuse for their loitering around and not being serious about getting something to do.
How do you ensure Nigerians live safely and get justice?
Our position is that somebody doesn’t have to die because he committed a crime. If there is a crime committed and the person is found guilty, we are not excusing anybody because in some of our programmes we also educate the Nigerian community on the rule of law. We educate our people on the requirements of South Africa in terms of residence permit. We orientate them on how to get proper documentation to live in the country, and how to engage in legit businesses, handwork and others so that you don’t find yourself on the wrong side of the law. We carry out workshops, seminars, teachings and educate our citizens on all of this.
As you know, Nigeria is a country where you have Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Niger-Delta people, or the South-South and others. So, we have all these associations here. However, what happens in some cases is that we do have what we call a town hall meeting. A town hall meeting brings together the leadership of all of these associations, either at our consulate office or at our high commission. The leaders of these associations have been addressed by our diplomats, by our ambassador or consular, consul general on the developments and the situations on hand. And then the leadership will go back to the grassroots to meet their various association members.
Source: PUNCH
A Nigerian-born Roman Catholic priest, Anthony Odiong, has been convicted by a jury in Texas, United States, for sexually assaulting women under his spiritual care, The Guardian reports.
Odiong, 57, was found guilty on one count of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree sexual assault after a trial in Waco, Texas.
The jury, made up of eight women and four men, delivered its verdict after about two hours of deliberation on Friday.
The court heard testimony from two women who said Odiong used his role as a priest to manipulate and pressure them into sexual relationships.
He was accused of exploiting his position as a Catholic priest to pursue sexual relationships with women he was providing spiritual direction.
Odiong, who pleaded not guilty, could face life imprisonment on the first-degree charge when sentencing begins on Monday.
Prosecutors said the offences involved two women who testified in court that the priest abused his clerical authority during periods of emotional vulnerability.
One of the women, identified in court documents as Mary Doe, told the jury that Odiong began a sexual relationship with her while providing spiritual counselling during a difficult divorce.
She also testified that her son once walked in on her and Odiong during intercourse at her home.
Another woman, Jane Doe, testified that he pressured her into sexual acts under the guise of spiritual guidance.
The case followed a 2024 report by The Guardian, which first documented allegations of sexual misconduct and coercion against the priest during his ministry in Texas and Louisiana.
Prosecutors said that report prompted one of the victims to come forward to police with further allegations.
Investigators later gathered additional evidence, including DNA linked to a child fathered by Odiong during his time in Louisiana.
Odiong, a naturalised US citizen, was ordained in Nigeria in 1993 and later served in Catholic parishes in Texas and Louisiana.
Authorities said he was suspended from the ministry in 2019 following earlier allegations of misconduct.
His lawyers argued during the trial that the relationships were consensual, but prosecutors maintained that he abused his position of authority as a clergy member.
A United States-based 23 year old tech-developer, Tony Kabilan Okeke, led a five-man team of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Penn., U.S. alumni and students to develop Xploit, an automated cybersecurity testing tool for AI agents, an ambitious concept that addresses a growing problem in AI landscape.
Beside Tony Okeke who is the Team Lead, other members of the team are Kamdi Okeke, Kiitan Fawole, Dalu Okonkwo and Michael Moemeke.
Speaking to our reporter on the development, Tony said, “As more businesses deploy AI agents that can take actions and use tools on behalf of customers, these systems become potential security risks. Unlike simple AI assistants, agents have access to tools and can perform real actions – meaning a security vulnerability isn’t just a PR problem, it could have serious real-world consequences.”
3rd from right, Team lead, Tony, Kamdi, Dalu, flanked by UEV partners
The team envisioned a tool that could automatically test an AI agent for vulnerabilities – essentially playing the role of a digital attacker to identify weaknesses before real threats could exploit them. This was the outcome of their brainstorming on November 21, 2025, when Tony led the group to build and pitch Xploit in the “Start-Up In a Weekend” Hackathon hosted on November 21 – 23, 2025 in Philadelphia, by The Foundry & Velric, a Philadelphia-based founder-first community that act as a startup ecosystem catalyst.
Tony designed the system’s architecture and created the initial prototype of the user interface (UI). The UI concept was crucial: it needed to visually show how their automated attacker was thinking, strategizing, and attempting different approaches in real-time, all displayed through interactive graph showing the attack process as it unfolded.
Responsibilities were strategically divided amongst the team. Some members created sample AI agents to serve as “victims” for testing. Tony developed the core attacking system. One person refined the user interface, and others handled the technical infrastructure connecting all the pieces together.
The attacking system itself works like a strategic game player. It would first choose an attack strategy, then create a detailed plan, execute that plan step-by-step by sending messages to the target AI agent, and analyze the responses to determine whether to continue or try a different approach. Throughout this process, the web interface displayed everything happening in real-time, allowing users to watch the automated tester work.
The team then integrated everything — making the attacker communicate with the victim AI agent systems, ensuring the automated testing loop ran smoothly, and polishing the final product. They recorded their demo video and submitted their project before the 9 am deadline on November 23, 2025.
During the afternoon judging session, the team delivered their pitch, framing their project around a massive, unaddressed market shift, highlighting a critical market gap: while the explosion of AI agents in 2025 has seen enterprises deploy them to manage everything from infrastructure to sensitive tasks like financial analysis and customer support, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are left vulnerable because they cannot afford to test them for security flaws. Unlike tech giants, SMBs lack the resources for dedicated AI security teams. Xploit, automated cybersecurity tool, directly addresses this need, positioning itself within a booming continuous automated red-teaming market projected to skyrocket from $495 million in 2024 to $4.9 billion by 2032. Xploit democratizes AI safety, levels the playing field, allowing any business to automatically test and secure their AI agents before deployment.
The judges were impressed enough that they took an unusual step — they asked to see the team’s code and development history to verify the project had actually been built during the hackathon weekend. This verification was necessary because the judges found it hard to believe such a polished product could be created in just one weekend.
The team won the “new project track” award and $1,500 in prize money.
“What made the achievement particularly remarkable” according to Kamdi Okeke, “wasn’t just that we built it over a weekend — it was that, competing amongst a diverse group of 100+ of Philadelphia’s most driven creators, we built Xploit in less than a day of actual development time, transforming an abstract idea into a working, polished prototype through focused collaboration and strategic planning.”
Speaking further, Tony said, “The experience at yet another hackathon, UEV’s Venture Building Weekend hosted in Philadelphia, March 12 – 14, 2026, was a turning point for us. The mentorship and feedback we received from industry operators helped sharpen how we think about the problem and where our approach fits in the market.”
United Effects Ventures (UEV) is a Philadelphia-based pre-seed venture studio. Through its Venture Building Weekend, a competitive hackathon, focused on problem validation and go-to-market strategy, teams refined their ideas with guidance from experienced operators and investors. After a grueling 48-hour sprint, Xploit came tops, outperformed 15 other competing teams, earning a cash award and two advisory sessions with partners at UEV; and most importantly, industry experts validated Xploit’s focus on continuous red-teaming as a strong approach to discovering vulnerabilities in AI-powered products.
Mentors at the hackathon validated both the team’s identification of the problem – the growing security risks posed by AI agents operating autonomously in enterprise environment – and their approach of framing the product as continuous red-teaming platform, which could support an ongoing service model.
The accusation comes after US Central Command said its forces had on Monday attacked missile sites and boats in southern Iran that were trying to lay mines in the Gulf, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it fired at US aircraft trying to enter its airspace.
“The US terrorist army, continuing its illegal and unjustified actions since the ceasefire… has, in the past 48 hours, committed a gross violation of the ceasefire in the Hormozgan region,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that Tehran “will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation,” without elaborating.
Tuesday’s statement came as a top Iranian delegation was in Qatar for talks as part of a “diplomatic process” aimed at ending the war with the United States, which broke out on February 28.
AFP
Iranian authorities held mass public weddings in Tehran for couples who signed up to a state-sponsored scheme declaring their readiness to sacrifice their lives in the war against the US and Israel.
The ceremonies conducted late on Monday involved hundreds of couples in several major squares in the capital, including more than 100 in the vast Imam Hossein square in central Tehran, according to reports in Iranian media.
They were broadcast on state TV in a bid to boost wartime morale, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatening new military action against Iran amid a shaky ceasefire which halted the fighting that began on February 28.
Those involved had signed up, according to Iranian media, for the so-called “self-sacrifice” scheme (janfada in Persian) where people pledged to put their lives on the line in the war by, for example, forming human chains outside power stations.
Iranian authorities say millions of people, including top figures such as the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and President Masoud Pezeshkian, have put their names forward.
Couples arrived at the Imam Hossein square in military jeeps with mounted machine guns and were married on a stage in a ceremony presided over by a cleric, AFP images showed.
The stage was festooned with balloons and with a giant image of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public since being elevated to the position after the killing of his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war.
“Certainly, the country is at war, but young people also have the right to marry,” one young woman in a white Islamic bridal dress, who was not named, said beside her groom in footage published by the Mehr news agency.
A man in a dark suit, beside his bride-to-be, said they were happy the occasion marked the anniversary of the marriage of the Prophet Ali, revered by Shia Muslims, to Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.
“We received their blessings. Furthermore, we came to offer our best wishes to the people in the streets,” he said.
Mehr said 110 couples had taken part in the Imam Hossein Square ceremony alone. The AFP images showed crowds of well-wishers clasping roses and watching on.
Since the start of the war, Iranian authorities have held, on a near-daily basis, major pro-government gatherings in a bid to highlight popular mobilisation amid the conflict.
AFP
The Nigerian community in the United States has been thrown into mourning following the sudden death of Eric Ezeokoli, a student of California State University, Long Beach.
Ezeokoli, who was born on October 6, 1960, reportedly died on Friday, April 11, 2026, at Saint Mary’s Hospital after a brief illness.
Until his death, he was studying Engineering at the university, also known as Long Beach State University. Sources disclosed that he had previously lived in San Jose before relocating to the Los Angeles area.
Tragically, at the time of his passing, Ezeokoli was said to be homeless and living in his car, with no fixed address.
The deceased was originally from Anambra State, although details about his exact hometown remain unclear. There are indications he may have hailed from Aguata, but this has not been officially confirmed.
Efforts are currently underway to locate his family members and relatives in Nigeria. Members of the Nigerian community and concerned individuals are appealing to anyone with useful information about Ezeokoli’s background or family to come forward.
A contact person, Paul Kizito Eze, has been designated to receive information that could help trace the deceased’s relatives.
The appeal has also been extended to people from Anambra State, particularly those familiar with communities in Aguata, to assist in identifying and notifying the family.
The situation has sparked renewed concern over the welfare of some Nigerians living abroad, especially those facing hardship and isolation.
Anyone with relevant information is urged to reach out urgently to assist in reconnecting the late Ezeokoli with his family for proper burial arrangements.
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