South Africa’s Grammy-winning performer, Tyla, has scratched Lagos from her scheduled APOP World Tour just days after she drew heavy calls for a boycott of a December 22 performance in Nigeria as fresh news emerged on the xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa.
As of Friday, her planned Lagos stop was no longer on the tour schedule advertised on the singer’s website but gigs planned across Europe, North America and South Africa were still being advertised.
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Tyla was set to make a single stop at the Nigerian commercial city on her APOP tour, which was to wind up at Cape Town and Johannesburg. However, fans at the announcement lashed out at the singer and her management team on social media-arguing it was improper for them to host a South African artist at a time when reports about attacks on foreign Africans, including Nigerian citizens, were still emanating from South Africa.
While some insisted that musicians should not be victimised due to political issues between countries, others said artistes were also individuals.
The controversy spilled into the online sphere with a social media activist, Martins Otse, famously known as VeryDarkMan, announcing he would lead people to protest a concert in Lagos if it eventually held.
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It was a move that divided opinions, as some personalities asked the public to separate entertainment from international relations and security matters while others defended the call to boycott the concert as a symbolic protest against xenophobia.
At the time of this report, Tyla or her management team had not issued an official statement on the circumstances surrounding the removal of the Lagos stop. Neither had event organizers stated the Lagos gig had been cancelled or rescheduled.
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The turn of events happens barely a few days after concern was raised in both diplomatic and public sectors in Nigeria over the safety of Nigerians in South Africa.
Though politically and economically linked for decades, relations between Nigeria and South Africa are often soured by intermittent xenophobic violence. The removal of the Lagos gig will likely intensify ongoing debates on entertainment, public outrage and international relations.
