South African Grammy-winning singer Tyla has pulled Lagos from her APOP World Tour, just days after her planned show in Nigeria’s commercial capital became the flashpoint for a fierce boycott campaign over renewed xenophobic violence against Nigerians living in South Africa.
A check of Tyla’s official tour website on Friday confirmed the Lagos date, once billed as the tour’s only Nigerian stop, no longer appears on the itinerary. The change comes after a wave of online criticism tied to fresh reports of xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa.
The rest of the schedule, spanning Europe, North America, and South Africa, and closing with performances in Cape Town on January 4 and Johannesburg on January 9, remains untouched.
Tyla unveiled the tour earlier in the week to considerable fanfare, but the announcement almost immediately curdled into controversy. Nigerian social media users questioned the decision to host the singer amid reports of fresh xenophobic violence targeting Nigerians in South Africa, reviving long-standing tensions between the two countries.
The dispute quickly split into two camps: those who felt no South African performer should be welcomed in Nigeria while attacks on Nigerians continued unaddressed, and those who argued an artist shouldn’t be made to answer for her government’s failures or the actions of xenophobic mobs.
The temperature rose sharply on Thursday when activist Martins Otse, known online as VeryDarkMan, vowed to mobilise his “Ratel Movement” to physically block the concert if it went ahead, framing the boycott as African solidarity against South African xenophobia and accusing South African celebrities and promoters of staying silent on the attacks.
Not everyone backed the boycott. African Action Congress presidential hopeful Omoyele Sowore argued Tyla was being unfairly scapegoated, insisting Nigerians should direct their anger at “their real enemies” rather than “hold a talented musician… vicariously liable for the crimes of xenophobia.”
Also, former Kaduna Central senator Shehu Sani appealed for the concert to proceed without interference, and outlets named commentators such as Do2dtun, Solomon Buchi, and Oyemykke among the voices weighing in on both sides.
The backlash was fed by a string of grim headlines: reports of xenophobic attacks and the death of a Nigerian national, Chika Ibe, in Cape Town, as well as ongoing outrage over the deportation proceedings facing Chidimma Adetshina, the Nigerian-descended former Miss Universe Nigeria contestant caught up in a nationality dispute in South Africa.
As of Friday, neither Tyla nor her management had issued any public explanation for the Lagos date’s removal, and concert promoters had not announced a formal cancellation or postponement, leaving Nigerian fans, for now, without an official word on the fate of the show.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Tyla quietly dropped Lagos from her APOP World Tour after a boycott campaign tied to renewed xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa, including the death of Chika Ibe and the Chidimma Adetshina deportation row, gained momentum, with activist VeryDarkMan threatening to physically block the show.
Neither Tyla nor her team has explained the removal or confirmed a formal cancellation, so the decision reads as a quiet retreat from controversy rather than an official statement, a reminder of how quickly cross-border tensions can reshape an artist’s public plans, even without anyone taking accountability for it.
