Kingsley Ikeri, a Nigerian, has been killed by the police at Vryheid town in Kwazulu Natal Province of South Africa for allegedly carrying drugs.

The Nigeria union in South Africa confirmed this to NAN on Friday..

Within the past two years, over 100 Nigerians have been killed by the South African police.

According to Bartholomew Eziagulu, Chairman of the Nigerian union in the province, the 27-year-old businessman was allegedly tortured to death by the police.

He said the union’s investigations revealed that the police arrested the deceased and a friend on suspicion that they were carrying hard drugs.

He said while interrogating him, the police used plastic to cover his face to extort information from him.

“In the process, they suffocated the deceased. When the police took him to the hospital, he was confirmed dead,” he said.

Adetola Olubajo, Secretary-General of the union, said the national secretariat had been informed about the death of the Nigerian.

He said the body had informed appropriate Nigerian authorities and the police in South Africa.

A senior diplomat from the Nigerian Consulate in Johannesburg visited Vryheid on a fact-finding mission, accompanied by some members of the union and other Nigerians.

As of February, a total 116 Nigerians had been killed in South Africa through extrajudicial means in the last two years, according to Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora.

Seven in 10 of the killings were carried out by the South African Police.

The presidential aide disclosed this sometime in February when she met with Lulu Louis Mnguni, the South African High Commissioner to Nigeria, in Abuja.

Last month, Uchenna Eloh, a Nigerian based in South Africa, was strangled to death by South African policemen who suspected that he had illegal drugs on him.