News:
November 7, 2020
Speaker of the Community Parliament, Rt. Honorable Sidie Mohamed Tunis has said the issue of Nigeria closing its border is a concern to the parliament and would not help in the integration process.
According to him, the ECOWAS Commission and the Parliament were engaged in dialogue, in resolving the brouhaha but their effort was thwarted by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which did note help the situation.
He made this revelation after paying a courtesy call on President of the National Assembly of Benin on Thursday, November 5, 2020 when he interacted with journalists, and pointed out that, the issue of border closure by Nigeria came up in their discussion.
And added that, since the outbreak of the pandemic almost everyone on the globe has instituted measures, key among which include restriction of movement of people from one country to the other in the bid to curb the spread of the disease.
Speaker Tunis further pointed out that now that restrictions are easing, the issue of the border closure by Nigeria among other things would be looked at with more efforts that would yield positive outcomes that would be in the interest of all parties.
The fifth legislature is currently having a delocalized meeting in the Republic of Benin, on the theme, “African Continental Free Trade Area: prospects of its achievement within a context of Cross-Border Threats Terrorism and Insecurity, Pandemics and Protectionism)”.
Before the life span of the fourth Legislature of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ended at its last Session in Abuja when member states presented their country reports, lawmakers from countries affected by the border closure; Ghana, Togo, Benin and Niger expressed reservation on the border closure.
But then, representatives of Nigeria defended the action taken by their country pointing out that there were smuggling of rice into their country, which was hurting their economy and local farmers as well as smuggling of ammunitions into the country to perpetuate crimes.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com