Vincent Akanmode
BASED on his reputation for taking slow, predictable and generally innocuous decisions in his first four years in office, not a few Nigerians sneered at President Muhammadu Buhari when he threatened shortly after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared him the winner of the February 23 presidential election, that he would take very tough decisions in his second term. Four months into his second term, there seems to be reasons to believe that the pledge he made when some members of his cabinet paid him a congratulatory visit was more than mere act of grandstanding typical of the average political office holder in Nigeria.
Only recently, the President announced the adoption of cost-cutting measures he said were aimed at reducing the high cost of governance in order to save money for social investments and infrastructural development. Consequently, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, said restrictions had been placed on foreign trips and estacode allowances for ministers and heads of parastatals. A statement issued by the SGF also directed the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to review the allowances of public office holders, including governors and lawmakers. The statement said the government had reduced foreign travels for heads of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to two per quarter while first-class air tickets for some categories of officials were cancelled in order to “curb leakages and ensure efficiency in the management of the resources of government.”
But by far more daring was the President’s earlier decision to shut the country’s land borders with neighbouring countries like Ghana, Niger and Benin Republic. It is one policy that has sparked outrage not just from the neighbouring countries but also from Nigerians whose businesses and lifestyles are disrupted by it. For instance, reports from Kebbi State said that not a few marriages have been aborted by the closure of the land border between Nigeria and Niger Republic. In Lolo, a Nigerian community on the border between the two countries, many of the residents are said to have resorted to boat rides across the River Niger to see their spouses and in-laws on the other side of the divide.
Rice, millet and maize belonging to Nigerian cross-border farmers whose farmlands are located in the territories of Niger, Ghana or Benin Republic are said to be rotting away because the owners have no access to them. In a tone of deafening lamentation, a woman who sells a juice made from tiger nuts said her business was on hold because date, a vital ingredient of the drink, could no longer be imported from Niger. At home, I have grown weary of my wife’s persistent complaint about rising cost of ponmo, crayfish and melon because the importation of the addictive triplet is heavily restricted.
Yet the lamentations within are nothing compared to the wailings in the camps of traders in the neighbouring countries whose businesses depend almost entirely on the Nigerian market. Last week, Ghanaian traders threatened to boycott made-in-Nigeria products as a way of registering their displeasure with Nigeria’s closure of her land border with their country. A friend who visited Benin Republic recently recalled how traders in the country, particularly those who deal in ‘tokunbo’ (fairly used) cars, rice, apple and vegetable oil are now in the habit of creating special sessions dedicated to raining curses on President Buhari for revisiting a policy previously adopted by the Obasanjo administration to force the neighbouring country to hand over Ahmed Tidjani, the notorious leader of a trans-border syndicate responsible for snatching cars from Nigeria.
The then President Olusegun Obasanjo had taken the decision to shut the land border between Nigeria and Benin after Beninois President Mathieu Kerekou reneged on his pledge on the sidelines of a summit of the African Union to address the problems of car-snatching, arms and fuel smuggling, human trafficking and other crimes perpetrated by anti-social elements from the neighbouring country; the same reasons that informed the current action from the Buhari administration. The truth, however, is that no amount of curses can bring more affliction than has been handed to us through smuggling.
To be sure, Nigeria is not the only country to have resorted to shutting the borders with her neighbours. For more than 220 years beginning from 1639, Japan closed her borders to the rest of the world until 1853 when the American Black Ships commanded by Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan to American and, by extension, Western trade. Only China and the Netherlands had been allowed limited interaction with Japan during the period because China would not corrupt Japan’s culture and the Netherlands, being a protestant country, had no agenda to spread Christianity like other European countries. During the period, an American president was said to have mocked Japan’s isolationist policy, saying that by the time the Far East country would renounce the policy, the world would have overtaken them. How wrong! Japan emerged a stronger nation untainted by the corruptive influence of the West and economically stronger than the western countries that sought to lord it over them.
Like the Japan of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Buhari government is proceeding upon the principle that open borders amount to closed opportunities for national prosperity and inviting in the world means inviting in the world’s problems. I cannot agree more, given the myriad of evils our open borders have foisted on us as a country. The current border closure is a unique opportunity for our national rebirth economically and socially. As hinted at by the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) during his recent interaction with the Senate, the least that law-abiding citizens should do is support the government to see the potential gains come into fruition.
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