The Federal Government has dismissed claims by South African authorities that the 268 Nigerians recently repatriated from the country were all living there illegally.

Officials said many of the returnees lost their legal status because of long delays in the processing and renewal of immigration documents by South Africa’s Home Affairs system.

The first batch of evacuees arrived in Lagos aboard an Air Peace flight as part of the government’s voluntary evacuation programme for Nigerians affected by the recent wave of xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

Nigeria’s Acting High Commissioner to Pretoria, Ambassador Temitope Ajayi, said it was misleading to describe all the returnees as undocumented migrants.

According to him, several of them had applied for the renewal of their residence permits but were trapped by administrative backlogs that stretched for years.