BUA Founder Rabiu: How South Africa Denied Me Entry Into The Country But Allowed  Europeans

By Adesina Soyooye

Current Africa’s second richest man, Abdul Samad Rabiu, has narrated how he faced humiliation and inexplicable discrimination in South Africa for no other reason other than being a black man, and perhaps, a Nigerian.

Rabiu is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the BUA Group.

He narrated the story of his embarrassment on Thursday while presenting his paper Africa at scale: Capital, policy, and the architecture of growth at the ongoing Africa CEO Forum held in Kigali Rwanda.

According to Rabiu, the incident occurred in February of 2025 when he travelled to Cape Town from Lagos for the Mining Indaba. He said that he arrived the Airport, unknowingly, with an expired visa and was asked to go back. He was refused entry and turned back by the Immigration Officers over his visa. He took responsibility for his expired visa. But his shock and humiliation were complete when European travellers who arrived the Airport  with the same problem of expired visas were allowed in.

But, in his case, he was left stranded at the Airport for hours, and, finally, returned to Lagos  while the “Whites” (with same problem) were cleared to enter South Africa.

His words: “I had a personal experience. Last year February, I was travelling to Cape Town for the Mining Indaba. I left at night from Lagos to Cape Town. We arrived at 6 in the morning.

“As we arrived, we went to the immigration, I tendered my passport, and the immigration officer looked at it and was like, ‘where is your visa?’ And I said: ‘My visa is there.’ Unknown to me, my visa had expired the day before.

“Unfortunately, our crew did not check the visa to ensure the visas were valid. We were there for four hours, but at end of the day, I had to turn back. I was turned back to Lagos.

“But the issue is this: While we were waiting to see whether we would be able to get access to the country without the visas, there were like three international flights from Europe. All three flights were mostly Europeans.

“I was standing there by the immigration desk, and every passenger on those three flights went into Cape Town without any visa.

“I do not have a problem with the fact that I was there without the visa and I was returned. I took full responsibility of that.

“I had an issue with being an African in Africa, being turned away because I do not have a visa, and foreigners from other continents were coming in and were allowed to enter without a visa. This must change.”

Rabiu’s narration of his experience came at a time when South Africans are harassing, persecuting and killing other Africans, especially Nigerians, and ordering them out of their country, insisting that they have taken over their jobs, and, for some, unbelievably, their girlfriends!