Ghanaian president, Nana Akufo-Addo has broken his silence over the closure of Nigerian border, saying he was still hopeful that talks between his country and Nigeria over the closure of the Nigerian land borders would yield a positive result.
Addressing a delegation of a Nigerian commercial bank (name with held), he noted that “There’s a lot of room for continuing talks between Nigeria and Ghana in order for a breakthrough to be reached.”
Whereas in a separate report, Akufo-Addo had lamented saying “We are about to enter a delicate period in the ECOWAS journey looking ahead of the possibility of a single currency and trying to forge greater integration among our economies and at the same time have important security and other issues which confront us,” there had been unconfirmed report that if the Federal Government of Nigeria continues maintain hard stand on the border closure, Ghana may gang up with other ECOWAS economies to take hard decision position on Nigerian products.
He noted that “We have this business of the closure of the Benin border, which seems to some people to be a big blow to the ECOWAS project.”
Already, Ghanaian traders had asked their government to retaliate the closure even as Ghanaian government officials have continued to discuss the matter.
Only Tuesday, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele averred that Nigeria could only reopen her borders if and only if affected neighbouring economies comply with given terms and conditions.
One of the key conditions is to seize allowing their ports to be used in importing Nigeria-bond goods which are usually smuggled into the country thereby causing the economy to lose revenue in terms of correct duty payment.
