President Buhari and his delegate. |
The
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 through his Media Adviser, Femi Adesina, 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.
President
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 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, President Buhari said he had taken note and would reconsider
reopening 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 the closure of the Nigerian border was having on his people.
President
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.
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