Nigeria Working To Open Closed Borders—Nigerian Commissioner

The Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Ambassador Olufemi Michael Abikoye has justified that the temporal closure of its boarder was to curb rice smuggling into the country.

In spite of the rice smuggling, petroleum products, weapons, ammunition, and other agriculture products are being smuggled.

Speaking at the sensitisation programme organised by the Nigeria Union of Traders Ghana (NUTAG) and Nigerian Youth Association (NYA) in collaboration with the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council and Security Agencies in Kumasi, he said, the government needed to put temporal measures in place to tighten security on its borders.

He noted that the Nigerian government is putting effort to encourage local production, adding that about 85 per cent of rice consumed in Nigeria was produced by local farmers.

However, realised that illegal mass smuggling of foreign rice is crimpling the efforts.

The closure has affected the movement of goods and services from the West Africa sub-region into Nigeria through that section of the country’s border, a situation the Ghana Union Traders Association (GUTA) said is causing its members to incur huge losses.

“The Nigerian government has set up a team for security, for trade, to be able to look at the situation in terms of a lot of trucks that belong to Ghanaians at Seme border. That is the only country that the Nigerian government has agreed to have a window to look at the situation and solve the problem between Nigerian and Ghana,” he emphasised.