‘Nigeria, Ghana having best of relations’

The Ghanaian government has issued yet another directive to foreigners to vacate their markets. How is this current situation likely to affect Nigerians?The problem was there before I came here and I hope it will be resolved before I go. I met Hannah Tetteh, when she was Minister of Trade and the current Minister, Haruna […]

The Ghanaian government has issued yet another directive to foreigners to vacate their markets. How is this current situation likely to affect Nigerians?
The problem was there before I came here and I hope it will be resolved before I go. I met Hannah Tetteh, when she was Minister of Trade and the current Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, he is very friendly. Both of them have good disposition towards Nigeria.
The trade issue has attracted even the Nigerian Minister of State for Trade and industry and ECOWAS to Ghana. I thought at that time it was laid to rest until it started again this year in Kumasi. We were able to arrest it also.  I have spoken to our Nigerian brothers that if they are sent out of their traditional markets there are other places in Ghana where they can trade. But whatever be the case they should remain calm, be peaceful and make sure everything they do they are legal. The High Commission and the Nigerian government will always support them.
This persistent harassment of Nigerian traders in Ghana is it not a show of disrespect by the Ghanaian government?
Far from it! The word disrespect should not come to the picture. It cannot be said there is degeneration in their relationship. What I am just worried about to be frank is that I do not want to go back to 1979 in the past when we started turning our people away.
We don’t want to bring that kind of thing back. It will be very unfortunate. I think we have crossed this path long ago for a better relationship. Nigeria I can tell you is Ghana’s biggest partner. Look at the number of banks here, look at the number of insurance companies and look at the oil industries that are owned by Nigerians.
Ghana is a very good business environment. But we should look the other way too. We have huge Ghanaian presence in Nigeria. As I told you we just brought African World to start flying to Nigeria, Starbow even though they have not started flying, Meadow is coming also.
We want to see how we can strengthen our relationship, especially our economic relationship. There will always be cankerworms in relationships. The tongue and the teeth will always fight. I can tell you Ghana- Nigeria relationship is progressing so well.
But the cordial relationship is beginning to grow frosty, especially since 2007 when Ghanaian authorities locked up some shops belonging to Nigerian traders.
But on the positive note you said yourself since 2007 but I am sure with time it will be resolved. I hope it will happen in my own time and I have very limited time. This is one of the things I am focusing on and I have done everything to resolve the traders’ issue.
In spite of your assurances that things are not frosty between Nigerians and Ghanaians, but most traders are unhappy with the incessant face-off between them and their Ghanaian counterparts and prompted some of our traders to relocate from the country.
I am not aware that any Nigerian trader has gone back home, because of trade issues. Do not let anybody, who has gone bankrupt feed you with lies. Those who are doing legitimate businesses I have not seen anyone who has closed shop. Maybe there are but I do not think it was because of the problems. If they say they should not trade in their traditional markets there are other places.
Conservatively what is the volume of trade between Ghana and Nigeria?  
I cannot give you the exact figure the Bank of Ghana will be able to give you the statistics, but look at the banks, insurance companies. Every day from Nigeria you have almost 20 buses coming in and going out of Ghana. What are they coming to do? Inside those buses are millions of dollars. These are traders who are coming to buy goods from Ghana. On the formal level there are lots of Nigerian investments here. People also travel here for leisure and other purposes and every day they inject millions into the Ghanaian economy.
The desire by some Nigerians to have an education in Ghana is gaining ground, how involved is the Nigerian Embassy in assisting Nigerian students in the country?
Those coming to Ghana are just like those going to the United States for education. Some of them come here to get the Nigerian Identity Card. I think well over 120,000 Nigerians are schooling here. We look out for them. For instance I encouraged the Nigerian students to organize an election. They have a very active students union body on ground. I have visited a lot of the schools.
The good ones-those I think are very good. There are still a lot of good ones I have not been able to visit. Now you don’t usually get to know much about these students until something happens to them. But one thing is that any Nigerian that excels educationally like Tinuade Okoro that made a First Class in medicine from the University of Ghana, I gave her $ 1,000 to encourage others. But if you go to a mushroom school and you go and write a paper you are on your own. Tinuade graduated from the University of Ghana which is like our own University of Ibadan. Whenever they get into trouble, when they are in danger we give them moral support.
Talking about Nigerians’ quest for education in Ghana we find a situation where a number of them are duped and they get stranded. Is there a way the High Commission can enlighten aspirants on steps to take when seeking admission to schools?
We have done this extensively. Chairman, Nigeria’s House of Representatives, Abike Dabiri-Erewa was here and the visit was well publicized. We have used the media extensively to try to talk to our people about some universities in Ghana. There are lots of good universities here though.
We have told our people that when sending your children to Ghana or anywhere in the world parents should be involved. I have a friend, whose daughter was in one of these schools in a country. She is in the Caribbean now. The University she was attending was just a windowless mushroom university because I know that school.  I went to give them their passport at a time. In fact one of them told me ‘uncle I won’t let anybody that graduated from medicine from this university to touch me’.
There are many universities like that all over the world. Nigerians travel to school abroad not that there are no universities in the country. We have enough universities but we have a huge population and our universities cannot take everyone. Or people who are wealthy enough to say I want my child to study abroad for whatever reason.