Founder and Chairman of BUA Group, Abdul Samad Rabiu, has recounted how he was allegedly humiliated and denied entry into South Africa despite arriving for a major business conference, while European travellers were reportedly allowed into the country freely without visas.
Rabiu made the revelation on Thursday while speaking at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, during a session titled “Africa at Scale: Capital, Policy and the Architecture of Growth.”
The billionaire businessman disclosed that the incident happened in February 2025 when he travelled from Lagos to Cape Town for the Mining Indaba conference.
According to him, immigration officials stopped him immediately on arrival after discovering that his South African visa had expired just a day earlier.
Rabiu said he and his team spent nearly four hours at the airport before he was eventually deported back to Lagos.
“I take full responsibility because my visa had expired and my crew failed to notice it before the trip,” he said.
However, the businessman said what shocked him most was watching European passengers arrive on multiple international flights and gain entry into South Africa without visas, while he, an African, was denied access.
“While we were waiting at the immigration desk, there were about three international flights from Europe. Most of the passengers were Europeans, and they all entered Cape Town without visas,” he said.
Clearly disturbed by the experience, Rabiu said the incident exposed the painful contradiction in Africa’s push for unity and economic integration.
“I did not have a problem with being returned because I had no valid visa. My issue was being an African in Africa and being denied entry, while foreigners from other continents were allowed in freely without visas,” he said.
The BUA chairman called for urgent reforms to visa and immigration policies across the African continent, insisting that meaningful economic integration would remain impossible if Africans continue to face barriers while travelling within Africa.
