(Bloomberg) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said large quantities of rice and other goods are being smuggled into the country through its western border with Benin and that the frontier was “partially closed” by the security forces to curb the trend.
“The country has saved huge sums of money which would otherwise have been expended on importing rice using our scarce foreign reserves,” an emailed presidency statement quoted Buhari as saying during a meeting in Yokohama, Japan, with Benin President Patrice Talon. “We cannot allow smuggling of the product at such alarming proportions to continue.”
Though there was no formal announcement of a border closing, travelers have reported restrictions since Aug. 20, with long lines of trucks laden with goods waiting on both sides of the border.
Buhari, who won re-election in February, is seeking to boost agricultural production as a means of diversifying the country's economy away from its oil dependence, with self-sufficiency in rice production a key target.
As imports by Africa's most populous country of more than 200 million people plunged 95% in the last four years under government curbs, imports by Benin, which has only 11 million people, jumped to make it the biggest buyer from Thailand, the world's number two producer, according to the Thai Rice Exporters Association.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elisha Bala-Gbogbo in Abuja at ebalagbogbo@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Dulue Mbachu, Yinka Ibukun
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