Over the past 4 years I have been involved in 3 extensively researched projects investigating Nigeria’s informal economy, its trade relations with its neighbours/cross-border cooperation and regional integration in West Africa. @HassanIdayat @Nwankpa_A @amasonic @ChiomaChuka
In light of ongoing debates on Nigeria’s land border closure I feel compelled to draw on these research activities to share “two fundamental reasons and another” why I’m puzzled by the land border closure and think it is wrongheaded. #DOGONTURANCI thread:
Tbh, the list of reasons is really as long as my alarmingly long arms! but lots of clever people have tackled the other realities (i.e. that the #NGA govt should really be focusing on the difficult domestic business environment, energy & infrastructure deficits...
The threads I am about to launch on you innocent folks are drawn from an @AfricaProg report I co-authored with @PaulMelly2 titled "Nigeria’s booming borders…" (we used the term "booming" on purpose. chathamhouse.org/sites/default/…
We updated the analysis in a subsequent paper in 2018 for the @SWAC_OECD titled “incentives and constraints of informal trade between Nigeria and its neighbours”. oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/7aa6…
1. OK #threadstorytime, I think the land border closure is wrongheaded is because it goes against Nigeria’s productive complementarity with its neighbours. Let me explain.
2. There is strong complementarity in basic staple foods, pastoral productions bases and manufacturing between Nigeria and its neighbours.
3. This natural complementarity makes it virtually impossible to enforce a land border closure without decimating the livelihoods of millions that live in border communities on both sides. Cross-border trade is a way of life for real communities that live along our border.
4. These trading circuits transcend national boundaries and reflect both today’s demand and supply pressures and a long history of trading as well as cultural and personal ties between commercial cities across West Africa.
5. Better understanding and working with the complementarities of these trade flows rather than fighting, blocking and disrupting them can lead to the adoption of more suitable trade and market-support policies.
6. Anyway, no matter the official line, Nigeria’s customs service lacks the resources and capacity to seal Nigeria’s 4,047 km land borders and grind to a halt the economic activities of communities that share very deep ethnic, linguistic and cultural ties.
7. For instance, because Niger lies further north, on the fringes of the Sahara, its main arable growing season is both earlier and shorter than Nigeria’s – which means that, to some extent, production peaks in the two complement each other …is it that amazing #lookatGod?
8. This complementarity drives a 2-way grains trade that delivers a more prolonged and steady supply to consumer mkts on both sides of the border. I repeat, BOTH SIDES! Everything from beans,millet,sesame seeds,dried hibiscus flowers,ginger,dates,chilli pepper,sorghum to maize.
8. Sahelian demand for cereals is an important driver of agricultural production and farmers’ incomes in northern #Nigeria so how are these farmers meant to cope with this rather brash policy decision, particularly and more painfully, during the harvest period for key crops?
9. Trade in cereals within the region is a major contributor to food security and helps manage the flow of supplies to areas affected by shortages (a routine occurrence in Sahelian countries) which are also vulnerable to drought.
10. Nigeria shares its longest land border with Niger (1,497Km), which is one of the world’s poorest countries and drought prone. Trade policies that disrupt the flow of legitimate goods grown in the region threaten theirs and Nigeria's food security.
11. It begs the question, what would #Nigeria benefit from further impoverishing Nigeriens and Nigerians living in border areas like Jibiya and Illela?
12. As much as trade is being recorded better than it was 4 or so years ago when we did the @AfricaProg study, significant volumes of commodities are still informally traded between Nigeria, Niger and the rest of the Sahara-Sahelian region.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/…
13. Market associations and traders who operate across these borders, importing or exporting various commodities, particularly grains and livestock, have long developed methods of recording their transactions and managing their relationships with state institutions.
14. Again, how is the Nigerian government expecting businesses that operate informally to formalise and trust that they can invest in expansion when the government has shown that it can wake up one morning and squeeze them or just shut them in? @nevinomics @Nun_River
