President Muhammadu Buhari has attributed the partial closure
of Nigeria’s border with Benin Republic to the massive smuggling
activities especially of rice, taking place on that corridor.
The Nigerian leader gave the reason during an audience granted his
Beninois counterpart, Patrice Talon, on the margins of the Seventh Tokyo
International Conference for African Development (TICAD7), in Yokohama,
Japan on Wednesday.
Buhari, who expressed great concern over the smuggling of rice, said
it threatened the self-sufficiency already attained due to his
administration’s agricultural policies.
According to him, “Now that our people in the rural areas are going
back to their farms, and the country has saved huge sums of money which
would otherwise have been expended on importing rice using our scarce
foreign reserves, we cannot allow smuggling of the product at such
alarming proportions to continue.”
The Nigerian President said the limited closure of the country’s
western border was to allow Nigeria’s security forces to develop a
strategy on how to stem the dangerous trend and its wider ramifications.
Responding to the concerns raised by President Talon on the magnitude
of suffering caused by the closure, Buhari said he had taken note and
would reconsider reopening it in the not too distant future.
He, however, disclosed that a meeting with his counterparts from
Benin and Niger Republics would soon be called to determine strict and
comprehensive measures to curtail the level of smuggling across their
borders.
Earlier, President Talon had said he called on the Nigerian President
as a result of the severe impact which the closure of the Nigerian
border was having on his people.
Buhari also received in audience, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South
Africa during which issues of common bilateral relations especially the
killings of Nigerians in South Africa, were discussed.
The matter will be further examined during the Nigerian leader’s official visit to Pretoria in October 2019.
