President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says Nigeria’s partial border closure with the Republic of Benin is a setback to the integration project of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
He said in as much as individual nations had their national ambitions, such developments underscored the need for member states to examine and find ways to deal with the challenges that may arise out of the regional bloc’s economic integration process to derive the maximize the benefits.
The President raised the concern when an eight-member delegation of the First Bank of Nigeria (FNB) called on him at the Jubilee House in Accra on Monday (October 28).
He noted that ECOWAS, with the possibility of single currency and the myriad of economic and security challenges, was headed for a turbulent path on the journey to integration.
“We are about to enter a delicate period in the ECOWAS journey…looking ahead of the possibility of a single currency, and trying to forge greater integration among our economies, and at the same time have important security and other issues, which confront us.”
“We have this business of the closure of the Benin border, which seems to some people to be a big blow to the ECOWAS project.”
“I believe there are other considerations that we all have to look at and examine to find a way so that we can live in this Region in harmony and allow each one of us our national ambition to be fulfilled,” the President stated.
Nigeria unilaterally closed its land border with the Republic of Benin on August 20, 2019, in what it said was a stop-gap measure to the smuggling of contraband goods across the Seme Border.
The move, described by many as a protectionist measure, has had consequences for intra-regional trade, with many traders and business people, particularly importers of food products, being the hardest hit with the rot of their perishable good at the border.
The Nigeria Government has also closed the country’s eastern border with Cameroun, to curb the smuggling of rice to boost local production.
The Chairman of the FNB, Dr Oba Otudeko, commended Ghana for the economic and financial reforms it was undertaking, which has resulted in the economic stability the country was enjoying.
He gave the assurance that the FNB would continue to contribute its quota to the development of Ghana’s financial sector.
