President Muhammadu Buhari has explained that the massive smuggling of rice from Benin Republic has forced Nigeria to partially close its borders with the country.
He decried the massive smuggling activities, especially of rice, taking place on Benin Republic corridor.
Buhari also reported that the closure of the country’s western border was to allow Nigeria’s security forces develop a strategy on how to stem the dangerous trend and its wider ramifications.
The exercise, code-named ‘Ex-Swift Response’ was being jointly conducted by the customs, immigration, police and military personnel and coordinated by the Office of the National Security Adviser.
The Nigerian leader 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, yesterday.
Mr. Femi Adesina, the president’s spokesman in a statement in Abuja said that President Buhari expressed great concern over the smuggling of rice.
The president said the activities of the smugglers threatened the self-sufficiency already attained by the country due to his administration’s agricultural policies.
“Now that our people in the rural areas are going back to their farms, and the country has saved huge sums of money which would otherwise have been expended on importing rice using our scarce foreign reserves.
“We cannot allow smuggling of the product at such alarming proportions to continue,” he said.
MM/GIK/APA