Border reopening: Imperative of tackling illegal entry routes

 

“The initial border closure is not about restricting movement because that movement is natural but now that four land borders have been reopened, we must have the document of people entering from our borders, including Nigerians. For that, we have deployed technology which is called MIDAS (Migration Information Data Analysis System); with this technology in the four borders we reopened, it will register whoever passes, either a Nigerian or non-Nigerian, across our borders and once you have registered, it is for life.”

–        Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, in Ilesa, Osun State over the weekend.

 After 16 months of partial closure of Nigeria’s land borders, the Federal Government on Wednesday, December 16, 2020 reopened four of them with a promise to reopen others before the end of the year. The four borders reopened were the Seme border in the South-West; Ilela border in the North-West; Mfun border in the South-South, and Maigatari border in the North-West. Nigeria has about 86 manned border posts.

This newspaper in its Sunday, December 21, 2020 edition reported that data on seizures made by the Nigerian border patrol teams, which was made available to its correspondent in Abuja by the Nigerian Customs Service, showed that 157,511 bags of rice, 1,957 vehicles, 895 motorcycles, 10,447 bags of fertilisers, 18,630 jerrycans of vegetable oil, 74,307 jerrycans of Premium Motor Spirit, and 5,653 drums of PMS were seized during the period. It said 90 pump-action guns and 5,676 cartridges/ammunition were also confiscated, while the total monetary value as of December 17, 2020 was N12.36bn. Curiously, and tellingly too, while there are statistics of seizures, we were not told about any arrest of the smugglers in the corresponding period.

Among the benefits of the border closure is the increased revenue for the Nigerian Customs Service. According to its Comptroller-General, Hameed Ali, the agency collects between N4.7bn and N5.8bn daily since the Federal Government closed the major land borders. He made the revelation on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 when he appeared before the National Assembly joint committee on finance. Ali equally revealed that, “About 10.2m litres of fuel have now been cut down from what we had been assuming to have been consuming. These 10.2m litres of fuel are always going across the border.” On Monday, October 28, 2019, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin Emefiele, after meeting with the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), said Nigerian rice and poultry farmers are now laughing to the bank as all their unsold products have been bought with so much unmet demands due to the border closure.

It is a welcome development that the Federal Government has deemed it fit to reopen the partially closed borders even as it restates the sustained ban on contrabands which include rice, poultry products, second-hand clothing and used vehicles among others. It is inevitable that these borders will be reopened as no nation is an island. More so, while the borders were closed, smuggling thrived, according to several news reports. This is so due to the porous nature of our land borders. The front page report of THISDAY newspaper of Tuesday, October 22, 2019, said, “Despite the closure of Nigerian land borders by the Federal Government in the last three months, smuggling still persists at the border between Nigeria and Niger Republic.” The newspaper gathered that at the border between Jibia in Katsina State and Niger Republic, smugglers had resorted to the use of illegal routes to ferry in bags of foreign rice, bales of second-hand clothing and other contrabands.

On April 25, 2019, the Federal Executive Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo approved N52bn for an e-border solution to monitor the country’s borders. The immediate past Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, announced the approval while briefing State House correspondents. He said the contract would cover 86 border posts and the over 1,400 illegal routes being used for smuggling and other cross-border crimes. Can Nigerians be updated on where we are with this e-border project? So long as we have porous and unpoliced borders, smuggling will continue to flourish.

No doubt, these identified 1,400 illegal entry routes into Nigeria are our major challenge. Until we are able to effectively man these routes, the border closure initiatives will continue to be like pouring water into a native basket, an exercise in futility. Concerns have been raised that many of the killer herdsmen operating in Nigeria are migrants from as far as Senegal who in search of pastures for their cattle use their animals to graze on farmlands thereby causing herder–farmer clashes. These herders are able to get away with this crime because they are undocumented migrants who came in through illegal entry routes. So, while Aregbesola’s initiative of Migrant Information Data Analysis System is a noble effort, it must ensure that all these herders across the continent coming to graze their animals on Nigerian soil are captured under MIDAS.

Apart from that, until and unless we are able to effectively and efficiently man all the regular and irregular entry routes into the country, activities of insurgents in the Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, popularly called BAY states, will not cease. It has been reported that many of the Boko Haram insurgents carry out attacks on many of the towns and cities in these states only to retreat into Chad, Mali and Cameroon. I am not unaware that a Multinational Joint Military Task Force has been established among these countries; however, they have not been able to block or police the routes being used by the insurgents to carry out their nefarious activities.

Besides, there are concerns that these illegal entry routes are used to ferry in small arms and light weapons into the country. The United Nations in 2016 raised the alarm over the illicit proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Nigeria, saying more than 350 million out of the estimated 500 million of such weapons in West Africa are domiciled in the country. According to the UN, this has highlighted, more than ever before, the critical need not only to control the flow of arms in the non-state sector, but also the state-owned actors through the effective management of the armoury and weapon stockpiles. Since most of these SALW are not manufactured in-country, they must have been smuggled via these 1,400 unmanned illegal entry routes.

It’s not only arms and ammunition that are trafficked illegally into the country, there are also reports of hard drugs and psychotropic substances such as cocaine, heroin, tramadol, and cannabis being brought into and taken out of the country. The combination of these hard drugs with small arms and light weapons in the hands of non-state actors accounts for the heightening insecurity in Nigeria.

Stoppage of smuggling will remain a wishful thinking, unless a lot more attention is placed on the over 1,400 illegal entry routes into and out of the country. That is why the N52bn e-border solution of last year must be properly utilised and accounted for. As I have said on several electronic media platforms in the last few days, there is a need for deployment of aerial surveillance, use of drones, Closed Circuit Television cameras and automated scanners to all entry points into the country. More well-trained and incorruptible customs, immigration and other security officials also need to be deployed to our border posts. It is imperative to incentivise the border communities to act as whistle-blowers on smugglers operating in their domain as they are well-known in these communities. While joint border patrol is a welcome development, however, arrest and prosecution of barons of smugglings in Nigeria will go a long way to serve as a deterrent to other smugglers.