Closing borders over rice smuggling
Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development Audu Ogbeh recently announced a plan by the Buhari administration to close Nigeria’s borders in order to stanch the smuggling of foreign rice into the country. This drastic measure is a reaction to massive stocks of rice smuggled into the country at a time when domestic production of the […]
Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development Audu Ogbeh recently announced a plan by the Buhari administration to close Nigeria’s borders in order to stanch the smuggling of foreign rice into the country. This drastic measure is a reaction to massive stocks of rice smuggled into the country at a time when domestic production of the crop is increasing in response to a cocktail of government stimuli.
Given the status of rice as a staple in Nigeria, massive importation of which was draining scarce foreign exchange, government had launched a series of measures to reverse the trend and make the country self-sufficient in rice production. The border closure is therefore seen as the first step in protecting local production and preventing cheap foreign rice from disrupting our accelerated rice production schemes.
It is significant that Ogbeh mentioned as part of the causative factors for the invasion of smuggled rice, the problem of Nigeria’s porous borders. The porousness of the country’s borders is accentuated by a combination of factors such as weak logistic endowments of the border security officials and the connivance by some of them with smugglers. Majority of our security agents are honest, hardworking men and women who are doing their best but the bad eggs among them are marring all the effort. The crisis at Nigeria’s borders is also deepened by the provisions of the ECOWAS protocol on free trade in the West African sub region.
While the government may see its intentions as justified and the initiative as a sure fire solution, the enterprise remains fraught with booby traps that may diminish its eventual impact, and could even backfire. Border closure is an extreme measure that is usually justified by an extreme security threat. Serious though the rice smuggling problem is, it hardly qualifies as an extreme security threat. Smuggling of imported rice into the country is not more threatening than the unrestricted smuggling of numerous other commodities in and out of the country. While some of our neighbours may be benefitting from it, most of the nefarious activity is carried out by crooked Nigerian businessmen in connivance of equally crooked security agents.
Border closure may not therefore yield much success as the problem of porous borders may still diminish the returns from the venture. The same people and agencies that aid smugglers now could do so even if the borders are officially closed. It will increase the cost and the risk to the smugglers but this cost will only be passed on to Nigerian consumers. It is therefore important for government to step up, along with its border security efforts, an internal campaign to popularize local rice and appeal to citizens’ patriotism. Of course patriotic appeal alone will only go so far without concerted efforts to improve the quality of local rice.
Nigerians are now appreciating the locally produced rice but its quality is still an issue. Standardisation of quality and price considerations are still matters of concern which should engage Ogbeh and his team. Given the government’s interest in addressing the exogenous factors across the borders it can direct its interest to the complement of treaties between Nigeria and its neighbours, which provide ample protection for any party with respect to safeguarding its national interest within the ambit of regional cooperation. Just recently Nigeria was involved in a trans-border conference over the ECOWAS treaty on movement of persons and animals across borders in the region, which had been unattended to for as many as forty years.
Closing of borders to solve problems could in the long run wreck the ECOWAS treaty if other countries begin to learn from us and do the same thing. We should find a way to secure our borders without jeopardizing the higher interests of the country. As long as deep seated corruption persists among some security agents, even border closure will not solve the rice smuggling problem.