Published October 13, 2019
Nigeria’s countless and unheeded calls to her neighours to stop aiding and abetting smuggling, which is damaging her economy, led to the closure of her land borders in August. The action, earlier meant to last for 28 days, has entered the third month with its end date still indeterminate.

At issue is the unremitting smuggling of diverse products across the country’s borders, including the smuggling of rice from Benin Republic. Benin imports 1.2 million metric tons of rice annually, against the backdrop of its population of about 11 million people. The country is not alone: Niger Republic, Chad and Cameroon form the other members of the devious quartet in this sabotage. This is seriously threatening Nigeria’s domestic rice production, which has unprecedentedly spiked with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s rice Anchor Borrowers Programme. As one bright spot in the economic recovery effort, it has helped official rice import from Thailand to plummet from 644,131 metric tons to 20,000 MT annually, as of 2018, said the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed.



Undoubtedly, the closure has opened Nigeria’s eyes to new economic realities; and enamoured of them, the authorities have vowed not to reopen the borders until the affected countries learn to conduct themselves responsibly and in line with the principles that undergird the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of goods and services.

The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Hameed Ali, at a recent meeting with the Senate and House of Representatives Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning, lauded the initiative. He said, “There was a day in September that we collected N9.2 billion… It has never happened before.” Currently the country ratchets up between N4.7 billion and N5.8 billion daily revenue from imports. According to the Customs boss, with borders closed, cargoes that used to go to Benin Republic to berth en route to Nigeria “are now forced to bring their goods to either Apapa or Tin Can Island, and we have to collect duty on them.”

Equally revealing is the drop in fuel consumption by eight million litres a day, says statistics from the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva. Smugglers ferret out this volume of fuel daily across the borders. Besides the halt in rice and fuel smuggling, the border closure has become a boost to the local chicken market, while car malls with suspected smuggled automobiles are being raided by Customs to compel payment of duties. So far, the operation has been successful, largely due to the joint nature of the taskforce; Customs, immigration, police and military personnel are involved, coordinated by the Office of the National Security Adviser.

President Muhammadu Buhari is excited about the revelations from the operation and has threatened not to end it as long as our neighbours do not play by the rules. He should not capitulate to diplomatic pressure or the misguided nudges of local mercantile operators to end it until he is satisfied that the border haemorrhage is under control.

However, since the closure is not a permanent solution to this unabashed bazaar, government should not lose sight of the original intention of the action: to allow security agencies formulate effective strategies to stem the scourge. That blueprint ought to have been designed by now. Nigeria has one of the most porous borders in the world, aggravated by corruption of Customs officials and other state actors. The deployment of hi-tech in Nigeria’s 84 land borders is critical to addressing this systemic breakdown of border controls, while the challenges from the over 1,400 rogue routes, according to the Immigration authorities, should be faced squarely too.

Ali was forthright to admit that compromised Customs officials and the police helped to promote trafficking in contraband at the borders. He warned such officials of dire consequences if caught. But such thunderous countenances have not been in short supply from him; what the situation needs is a deliberate measure, not happenstance, to weed out tainted officials from the system. Without it, sanity will never prevail.

Nigeria’s “big brother” posture towards her neighbours has become ruinous to its economy and corporate existence. Therefore, enough is enough! With its small population, it is difficult for Benin to justify why it is the world’s sixth largest rice importing country, according to statistics by Worldatlas, if not for its illicit border trading activities, with Nigeria as the target. Through these breached borders, illicit arms are also trafficked into the country – a fillip to the epidemic of banditry, armed robbery, cattle rustling and, above all, Boko Haram jihadists who have killed about 100,000 people in their 10-year-old campaign to establish an Islamic caliphate.

No serious country allows its economy to be sabotaged by neighouring countries. ECOWAS protocol is hinged on free movement of “legal” goods and “legitimate” services. Nothing more. As economically advanced as the United States is, it is still deeply concerned about how to effectively police her border with Mexico to ward off illegal immigrants and prevent smuggling of contraband. Now that Nigeria seems to have woken up from her slumber, the border mayhem cannot be eradicated without systemic ports reform. No question, Apapa and Tin Can ports are disincentives to business in their present state: scanners are scarcely available, physical contacts of persons govern daily operations in this digital age and cargoes are not evacuated through rail transportation, but by tankers and trailers that queue for months, mired in bad roads. Many countries have corporatised or engaged the private sector in their operations for optimal efficiency and profit-taking. Massive technology deployment and decentralisation of tank farms are critical.

From the seaports of Antwerp, Belgium, Singapore, Amsterdam in Holland, Nigeria has a lot to learn in 21st Century port reforms to boost her economy. In the present circumstances, therefore, decongesting the Lagos ports by opening up the under-utilised Warri, Port Harcourt and Calabar channels has become inevitable.

https://punchng.com/beyond-our-land-borders-closure/

Good job by the Buhari lead administration

As much as it has become necessary to act against the increasing smuggling in the country, I wonder what really is the need for us as a nation to have custom officers who can't do their jobs at the borders

This is one good move every sane citizens of this country is giving a + nodding.

Let the border remain closed for now. Custom officers should be placed under close watch too. Those guys have done enuf damage.

Ok

Well, one solution is to remove fuel subsidies...

Here is the thing. Fuel is being smuggled to neighbouring countries...because

1.In Benin, fuel is N298. In Niger, it is N370, and in Cameroon it is at least N300 per liter.

2.Subsidy works this way. Importers buy fuel at N200 per liter, and sell it to depot at N137. Government pays the difference (N63) between the cost of importation and sale...meaning many importers cannot make a profit.

3.So importers import fuel, smuggle some across the border....and make a cool profit.

4.Also, a lot of fuel marketers make a lot of profit by smuggling fuel across the border too. Buy fuel at N137...sell across the broder at N300 and above....that 's a tidy sum made.

5.Deregulation, while being hard on Nigerians (before you shout at ,me, I am fully aware that removing subsides is going to be harsh, and God knows I wish it was not so), would end this smuggling.

6. We could save over N500billion annually or more from removing subsidy...which could eventually lead to making improvements in trasport, education health, etc.

7.Investors in our oil and gas sector would be attracted, which means more refinereis, and crucially more jobs.

It's well

Undoubtedly, the closure has opened Nigeria’s eyes to new economic realities; and enamoured of them, the authorities have vowed not to reopen the borders until the affected countries learn to conduct themselves responsibly and in line with the principles that undergird the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of goods and services.

Equally revealing is the drop in fuel consumption by eight million litres a day, says statistics from the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva. Smugglers ferret out this volume of fuel daily across the borders. Besides the halt in rice and fuel smuggling, the border closure has become a boost to the local chicken market, while car malls with suspected smuggled automobiles are being raided by Customs to compel payment of duties. So far, the operation has been successful

Desperate situation require desperate measures .

Okay

post=83089903:
okay

Suyaman, you got nothing to say.

Solutions today; more problems tomorrow.

We are in a never ending cycle

A good move by the president. We need to be productive as a people aside from border inflow and outflow. Cheap Lexus down my sig

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Kudos to Apc led government... No Nigeria president ever had the balls to close the Nigeria- Benin borders.

The smugglings' going on on that border might have overtaken Nigeria imports for years

Ok

Food for thoughts

This is pathetic, Nigerians are very pathetic. Blacks everywhere are very pathetic who would blame whites for their woes.


Subsidy has been on for years now, yet we refine our crude away.
Fed is hoping on re-establishing toll gates to garner funds for the repair of roads which we all know would never be used to repair roads.

A recent report shows that about 8trillion naira has been moved out of Nigeria since 1999 only in the power sector, now if half of that money had been properly utilised, we would have solved more than half of our problem.


If fed needs Nigeria to feed herself, there are so many measures a serious people would put in place. The north produces, majorly, all the rice consumed in Nigeria, but lack of access to water limits their production. Now, if nations can lay massive pipes underground to get crude from other nations like the one from SS to Kaduna Refinery, why can't Nigeria channel water from the Niger, Benue or the ocean to the North.

How many farmers are being empowered, I remember when GEJ bought feature phones for farmers as an empowerment programme, that's pathetic.



No serious country hoping to feed itself would resort to manual labour, one reason our rice is expensive, even before the closure. If the rice was already there, they would have used Price as a bait to get people to buy the produce and not compete with the price of imported rice. We need machines that would churn out large produce year in year out.
Ordinarily, our rice should not be more than 6k a bag but even before the closure, it was double that amount cause of poor production practices.


Nigeria has everything they need to survive, but Nigerians are pathetic.

Nigeria consumes everything but Nigeria produces nothing, even the so-called pencil they have started producing, all the materials needed for its production are imported from China, and these are materials we could easily get in Nigeria if we are serious. That's pathetic.



But your leaders are not he problem, the last time I checked, no African nation was a communist nation, you dumb pathetic clowns are the problem. You dumb clowns that only see religion and tribalism.


Funnily enough, neither of the largest religion in Africa started in Africa. Former Christians in France and Britain, the two nations that colonized us, are renouncing their faith day in day out, but we fools, we pathetic bunch seem to be waxing stronger day in day out.

The most religious countries in the world (except Saudi and UAE--these two, to me, are not very religious) are the poorest and the most corrupt and the most insecure nations in the world. Well, corruption leads to poverty and poverty leads to insecurity. That explains the logic.

A food for thought. One thing you should never feel is PATHETIC.

D

Still more stories cos the Rice issue was busted yesterday. this story is a cover up. Now they can't blame opposition it now our neighBours they want to blame

PoliticalWitch:
Well, one solution is to remove fuel subsidies...

Here is the thing. Fuel is being smuggled to neighbouring countries...because

1.In Benin, fuel is N298. In Niger, it is N370, and in Cameroon it is at least N300 per liter.

2.Subsidy works this way. Importers buy fuel at N200 per liter, and sell it to depot at N137. Government pays the difference (N63) between the cost of importation and sale...meaning many importers cannot make a profit.

3.So importers import fuel, smuggle some across the border....and make a cool profit.

4.Also, a lot of fuel marketers make a lot of profit by smuggling fuel across the border too. Buy fuel at N137...sell across the broder at N300 and above....that 's a tidy sum made.

5.Deregulation, while being hard on Nigerians (before you shout at ,me, I am fully aware that removing subsides is going to be harsh, and God knows I wish it was not so), would end this smuggling.

6. We could save over N500billion annually or more from removing subsidy...which could eventually lead to making improvements in trasport, education health, etc.

7.Investors in our oil and gas sector would be attracted, which means more refinereis, and crucially more jobs.

Bro the proceeds would still be subjected to embezzlement. That's it

In as much as it also affect my personal business... it is still a good move..

If people know the amount of guns.. and other illegal stuffs coming in through the land border. We will not open it anymore...


People smuggle Guns in through rice containers, and other goods. Which systematically increases the rate of crime.

Another area to tackle gun runners... is to watch those people from Togo and Benin republic, that come in through the water ways... some via smaller boat and some via smaller vessels from the Neighbouring countries.


And please tell the marine police to stop collecting bribe... this arm guys uses the usual faces the Securities knows to be frequently passing a particular route to smuggle in alot of things...

princemillla:



Bro the proceeds would still be subjected to embezzlement. That's it

And the beauty of democracy is that you are meant to hold your leaders accountable.

The thing is, most Nigerians (me inclusiive) won't do the hard work of democracy...ie accountability. They just think that it is all about voting X or Y and then go home.

My God , so after closing border Nigeria daily consumption of petrol drop by 8millions litres. . Some Nigerians re killing our economy and causing hardship for the vulnerable because of their own gain. Nigeria is actually paying by proxy for petrol subsidy in benin,Niger and cameroun.

BUHARI SHUT THE BORDER AND THROW THE KEYS INTO LAGOON.

naijapower:
Good job by the Buhari lead administration

Good job? Zombie.

Charleys:


Suyaman, you got nothing to say.

i bet u are inlove with the guy chai abi u be IPOB ni

This is a welcome development ,the house of assembly and Senate members too should buy Nigerian made products.

PoliticalWitch:
Well, one solution is to remove fuel subsidies...

Here is the thing. Fuel is being smuggled to neighbouring countries...because

1.In Benin, fuel is N298. In Niger, it is N370, and in Cameroon it is at least N300 per liter.

2.Subsidy works this way. Importers buy fuel at N200 per liter, and sell it to depot at N137. Government pays the difference (N63) between the cost of importation and sale...meaning many importers cannot make a profit.

3.So importers import fuel, smuggle some across the border....and make a cool profit.

4.Also, a lot of fuel marketers make a lot of profit by smuggling fuel across the border too. Buy fuel at N137...sell across the broder at N300 and above....that 's a tidy sum made.

5.Deregulation, while being hard on Nigerians (before you shout at ,me, I am fully aware that removing subsides is going to be harsh, and God knows I wish it was not so), would end this smuggling.

6. We could save over N500billion annually or more from removing subsidy...which could eventually lead to making improvements in trasport, education health, etc.

7.Investors in our oil and gas sector would be attracted, which means more refinereis, and crucially more jobs.

You are on point. I don't expect the clueless bigot Buhari to do that though.

TSA, VAT increment, Toll gates, charges on bank deposits, custom duty revenue windfall, and many more. Yet it doesnt reflect in the way of an improved welfare of the populace. Worst govt ever.