The Nigerian Union of Traders Association in Ghana (NUTAG) says the Federal Government’s decision to reopen its land borders would help to reduce the harassment of Nigerians by Ghanaian traders, an official of the association has said.

The President of NUTAG, Chukwuemeka Nnaji, told NAN in a telephone interview that reopening the border would ease trade for Nigerian traders in Ghana, as ”we are going to benefit anyways”.

Mr. Nnaji said: “Nigeria is the major source of our import from Ghana, therefore opening of the border is a welcome idea, because it is going to help us grow our businesses.

“We really suffered during the lockdown, some of our members lost big sums of money and other valuables, as such reopening the border is a good idea and we commend the government.

“Re-opening the border will help to an extent in stopping Ghanaian traders from harassing us; in 2019 they harped on closure of the border by Nigerian government as the reason for the harassment.

”Since the border is opened now, they cannot say it is because the border is closed, because they know that Ghana and Nigeria trade wars did not originate from border closure”, he said.

He disclosed that Ghanaian traders had since 2017 been harassing their Nigerian counterparts, while shops owned by Nigerians were closed in 2019, and that despite negotiations by the governments of the two countries, Ghanaian authorities in December, 2020, locked 40 Nigerian shops, a week prior to their national elections.

Mr. Nnaji  decried restriction of movement and goods as some of the challenges faced by Nigerian traders, adding that it became impossible to move goods from Nigeria to Ghana, while the prohibitive cost of transporting goods, as a result of the border closure, also added to their woes.

(NAN)