ON NIGERIA'S BORDER CLOSURE
At the crux of Nigeria's border closure crisis is a selective implementation of the ban on foreign rice, which exercises thorough high handedness in her southeastern markets, borders and routes but turns a blind eye to the massive rice smuggling and trading activities ongoing in her Northern markets.
Clearly, the controversial and premature policy aimed at spurring widespread consumption of locally made rice despite insufficient local production capacity has been hijacked as an avenue to economically distabilize the South East. Major markets in major Southeastern cities like Onitsha, Aba, Port Harcourt, Enugu etc. are being raided by security operatives, with shops locked down and warehouses sealed in the brutal hunt for foreign rice thus further spiking prices, soaring inflation, crippling businesses and impoverishing the masses in the East. But it is a different story in the North, as the same commodity seized in the South are freely transported with escorts from law enforcement agents, traded in the open market and consumed courtesy of her numerous porous borders.
Under the utterly tyrannical APC government of Nigeria, is an unwritten agenda is to relocate the economic power of the nation to the Northern region by crippling the South or controlling her growth despite the glaring fact that square pegs do not go into round holes.
The ugly situation of selective justice is exacerbated by the docile crop of selfish, subservient, bootlicking state governors and legislative law makers of the Southeast region who are corrupt and insensitive to the untold hardship of their people. They are a poor representation of the tenacity and resolve of their people and an utter disappointment to the heavily oppressed South-easterners under President Muhammadu Buhari.
Muhammadu Buhari Professor Yemi Osinbajo Nigerian Immigration Service Nigerian Customs Service South East/South South Network SESSNet South East South South Governors Forum All Progressives Congress – APC Anambra State Anambra State Online MarketWatch The Economic Times Sahara Reporters Guardian Nigeria The Sun Nigeria Nigerian Senate House of Representatives, Federal Republic of Nigeria Ahmed Lawan Femi Gbajabiamila
