Border Closure Policy And Socio-Economic Development In Nigeria: The Unintended Consequences.
Obiorah Chidozie Beneth PhD
Department of Political Science, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
Davies Emmanuel Opuene PhD
Department of Political Science, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt
Keywords: Border Closure, Economic Growth, Socio-economic Development, Unemployment, National Economy
Abstract
Policy making is one of the responsibilities of the modern governments through which development agenda are initiated. However, every decision taken by any government has its implications which could either be positive or negative depending on the spirit of such decision. Consequently, on 20th August 2019, the Nigerian government, under the administration of President Buhari, came up with the policy of border closure where the country partially closed all its land borders with Benin, Togo, Niger, Cameroon and Chad – citing the irate level of smuggling of goods into the country, especially staple food commodities like rice, cooking (vegetable) oil, poultry, tomato, flour and pasta as her reasons. The closure of Nigeria’s land borders has now been fully consolidated – with further restrictions on import and export of goods through land borders. Arising from the above, there has been an argument and counter-arguments over the implication of the recent policy. Thus, the study generally examined the impacts of the recent (2019) border closure on socioeconomic development in Nigeria. To appraise this, the study adopted Elite Theory to interrogate the implication of this recent policy on economic growth and development. The method of research was anchored on ex-post facto design utilizing qualitative data, and the deductive method of data analysis was adopted. The study revealed that the policy was untimely established by the government and identified some of its implications to include; unprecedented rise in the prices of food/goods, loss of employment/businesses, corruption and increase in smuggling of goods among others. The study recommends that government should revert this policy for the interest of the national economy, take care of the security agents along the border areas and provide the factors that could cushion the effect of border closure before embarking on it.