POLITICS-NIGERIA: Benin Border Reopens

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

SEME, Nigeria, Aug 16 2003 (IPS) - Economic activities have returned to Seme, a town on the border with the Republic of Benin, which was closed a week ago over cross-border crimes including armed robbery, fuel smuggling and human trafficking.

Travellers have been stranded since Aug. 9 when both sides of the border were closed.

On Friday afternoon, IPS noticed a lot of activities on the two borders. ”It has been like this since morning when the border was reopened following directive from President (Olusegun) Obasanjo. Thanks God, life has gradually returned to this place,” said Bayo Shekoni, a resident of Seme, some 100 kilometres west of Lagos.

Shekoni says immigration and customs officials have been clearing travellers who besieged the border posts. The posts had turned into ghost towns during the period the borders were closed as Nigerian immigration, customs, state security service and anti-border crime police unit were involved in enforcing the order to tighten the border.

The closure caused misery for thousands of traders who ply the busy Cotonou/Lagos route. Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, has one of the world’s largest ports but high-docking fees, long-waiting times, inefficiency and corruption have forced many traders and importers to unload in Cotonou. From Cotonou, the goods are moved by trucks across the border, sometimes illegally through bush paths that dot the more than 700 kilometre porous border.

Cheap refined petroleum products from Nigeria are also smuggled across the border into Benin.

”It has been a serious problem for us in Cotonou. The last one week was like vacation as many businesses were shut down. The sad thing is that Benin’s economy is tied to the Nigerian economy. The closure had a very serious impact on those of us doing business in Cotonou,” Cyril Uchendu, a Nigerian businessman, told IPS.

Efforts to resolve the crisis came Thursday when President Obasanjo arrived at Seme to receive his Beninois counterpart Matheu Kerekou who was waiting to be invited into Nigeria. Both leaders later drove in a motorcade to Badagry, 50 kilometres inside Nigeria to a summit organised to resolve the crisis.

Obasanjo was unhappy that Beninois authorities had not done much to check cross-border crimes despite assurances from Kerekou earlier that action would be taken against one Ammani Tijjanni, a Nigerian living in Benin, who has received more than 30 vehicles stolen from Nigeria. Instead Tijjani was treated with kid gloves by the judiciary in Benin which released him, to the dismay of Nigerian authorities.

Kerekou promised that Tijjani would be re-arrested and extradited.

Statistics show that in the last three years more than 2,000 vehicles stolen from Nigeria were taken to Benin through the porous borders. In a Memorandum of Understanding, that the two leaders issued at the end of the Badagry meeting, both sides agreed that criminals shall be extradited and stolen goods, particularly vehicles, shall be returned immediately to the appropriate authorities in the country from which they were stolen.

”Where criminal activity is suspected, a report shall be lodged immediately with the appropriate authorities of both countries for necessary action,” it stated.

Nigerian immigration officials have often complained of harassment from Beninois security agents whenever they tried to intervene in harassment of Nigerian nationals at the border.

Obasanjo said their meeting will send clear signals to criminals on both sides that their days are numbered. ”Since the border closure, no car snatching report along the border was received,” he said.

Nigerians have hailed Obasanjo’s decision to reopen the border. ”Benin has learnt its lessons. I hope they will now realise that they cannot take us for granted,” says Isaac Ighure, a senior government official in Lagos.

Comfort Obilaja, a head teacher in Lagos, says: ”Benin episode will also send a clear signal to other neighbouring countries, which are fond of harassing Nigerians or undermining our economy and security through the porous borders, to think twice”.