The Republic of Benin President took time off on the margins of the Seventh Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD7), in Yokohama, Japan today, August 28 to plead with President Buhari to act fast before his people begin to die of hunger.
President Talon narrated the magnitude of suffering caused by the closure of the border, saying that the closure is having “severe impact on his people.”
President Buhari, who promised to reconsider reopening the border in the not too distant future, said that it was closed as a result of massive smuggling activities, especially of rice, taking place on that corridor.
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.
“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 leader said that 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.
He said 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.
