Stake holders in real sector of the economy had said that border closure is an application of short term solution to long term problem.

This was made known in lagos yesterday at a one day retreat/end of the year party organised by Commerce and Industry Correspondence Association of Nigeria (CICAN).

The stakeholders reviewed the impact of border closure in their businesses and arrived at a conclusion that the border closure, which has lasted for 121days, is just but application of short term solution to along term problem.

They noted that though Nigerian farmers are rejoicing that the border closure has advanced their businesses, the development is not too good to small and medium scale businesses as it has brought more suffering to the common man.

They also added that rather than closing the borders, government should device a better and more effective way of controlling Nigerian borders while the personnels assigned to man the borders should stop compromising and do the work they were assigned to do.

In their view, Nigerian borders are not porous rather the officials of government manning the borders are porous.

In his presentation at the retreat, the Chairman, National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME), Dr Adams Olu Adebayo, noted that there are about 1,400 illegal borders in Nigeria questioning how many of them that were successfully closed?

Adebayo, who is a rice farmer, said though the border closure is a prayer answered on the side of rice farmers, the problem of Nigerians, the farmers in particular goes beyond that .

He therefore urged Nigerian workers at the borders to be sincere to themselves and do the work they were assigned to do so that containers of banned goods which cross the borders daily will cease to enter and every body will be better for it.

According to him, why it is obvious that border closure has not brought solution to the problem of an average Nigerian is because what the closure has succeeded in doing is to increase the price of Nigerian rice through the forces of demand and supply.

“The border closure is not a win win situation, border control in Nigeria is erroneous.The effect is that local rice that was hitherto sold for N12000, per 50kg bag and no body was buying is now sold for N20,000 and people are rushing to buy because there is shortfall in supply.

“This is because the rice growers are not prepared and are not encouraged by government therefore cannot hire enough labourers. There are no enough and substantial equipment and planning for what we are into now, our engineers should have been trained in proper research on how best to process our rice so that it will be better than what we have now”.

“Ofada rice is scarce because the specie we have been planting since 50 years ago is still what we are planting and there is no improvement”.

The NASME boss, concluded by saying that government has done well in closing the borders since August 19th, 2019 but that there is need to consider other areas it has got negative impact on businesses and devise better way of controlling the borders while the government workers at the borders tell themselves the truth and do their work religiously and Nigerian masses determine to eat only what we can produce in the country.

Also speaking, CICAN Chairman, Mr Charles Okonji, emplored government to look into the plight of Nigerian Manufacturers and provide an enabling environment that will help them produce at full capacity.

He said government should realise that it can only provide 10 percent of employment needed in Nigeria while the private sector provides the needed 90 percent.

He said because of this, government should put in place policies that will enable job creators like manufacturers be active in production to be able to provide those needed jobs.

He said government should reduce taxes on manufacturers and improve the power sector because manufacturers currently spend outrageously on power.

He said on their part, the manufacturers should take advantage of the existing huge market in the country and encourage themselves to continue their work irrespective of the discouragement on their way.