President\nMuhammadu Buhari has attributed the partial closure of Nigeria\u2019s border with\nBenin Republic to the massive smuggling activities, especially of rice, taking\nplace on that corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n
The Nigerian leader, according to a statement by his spokesman, Femi Adesina, gave the reason during an audience granted his Beninois counterpart, Patrice Talon, on the margins of the Seventh Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD7), in Yokohama, Japan on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n
President\nBuhari, who expressed great concern over the smuggling of rice, said it\nthreatened the self-sufficiency already attained due to his administration\u2019s\nagricultural policies.<\/p>\n\n\n
According\nto him, \u201cNow that our people in the rural areas are going back to their farms,\nand the country has saved huge sums of money which would otherwise have been\nexpended on importing rice using our scarce foreign reserves, we cannot allow\nsmuggling of the product at such alarming proportions to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
The\nNigerian President said the limited closure of the country\u2019s western border was\nto allow Nigeria\u2019s security forces develop a strategy on how to stem the\ndangerous trend and its wider ramifications.<\/p>\n\n\n
Responding\nto the concerns raised by President Talon on the magnitude of suffering caused\nby the closure, President Buhari said he had taken note and would reconsider\nreopening in the not too distant future.<\/p>\n\n\n
He,\nhowever, disclosed that a meeting with his counterparts from Benin and Niger\nRepublics would soon be called to determine strict and comprehensive measures\nto curtail the level of smuggling across their borders.<\/p>\n\n\n
Earlier,\nPresident Talon had said he called on the Nigerian President as a result of the\nsevere impact the closure of the Nigerian border was having on his people.<\/p>\n\n\n
President\nBuhari also received in audience, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa during\nwhich issues of common bilateral relations especially, the killings of\nNigerians in South Africa, were discussed. The matter will be further examined\nduring the Nigerian leader\u2019s official visit to Pretoria in October 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Muhammadu Buhari has attributed the partial closure of Nigeria\u2019s border with Benin Republic to the massive smuggling activities, especially of rice, taking place on that corridor. The Nigerian leader, according to a statement by his spokesman, Femi Adesina, gave the reason during an audience granted his Beninois counterpart, Patrice Talon, on the margins of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5779,4,5774,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agriculture","category-business","category-food","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}