The 28-year-old, who played for his country at the 2018
World Cup, shared screenshots of abusive messages sent to him on Instagram
after scoring in Saturday's 3-2 home defeat by Bologna.
"It's sadly become a regular occurrence on social media but these hateful words have no place
anywhere in society," Nwankwo told BBC Sport Africa.This incident comes barely two weeks after his Algerian
team-mate Adam Ounas - on loan from Napoli - received racist abuse on social
media following Crotone's 4-2 win over Torino.
Nwankwo is the top-scoring African in the Italian top flight
with 13 goals in 28 matches for bottom club Crotone.
He said social media abuse being directed at players was on
the rise and that the authorities and social media companies needed to do more
to identify the perpetrators.
"You can see it's coming from ignorant [people]. We
cannot let racist and hateful abuse become a normalised part of the game,"
he added.
"I can't believe how many of these unspeakable
messages, from different users, send racist abuse at footballers.
"We can only hope that more efforts will be put in to
ensure the general public and not just footballers feel safe on social media
platforms."
Facebook, which owns Instagram, has previously said it would
take tougher measures to tackle the issue of online abuse.
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