ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXEMPTS DANGOTE FROM BORDER CLOSURE – SUCH ORDER SHOULD BE FOR ALL IMPORTERS/EXPORTERS/BUSINESSES IRRESPECTIVE OF WHO
November 11, 2020 | News
Sometimes I wonder why would the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government, who was supposedly elected to govern the whole country irrespective or tribe and religion, often take actions and decisions that are best described as ‘triggers for disunity’ and antagonism.
ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXEMPTS DANGOTE FROM BORDER CLOSURE – SUCH ORDER SHOULD BE FOR ALL IMPORTERS/EXPORTERS/BUSINESSES IRRESPECTIVE OF WHO
Sometimes I wonder why would the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government, who was supposedly elected to govern the whole country irrespective or tribe and religion, often take actions and decisions that are best described as ‘triggers for disunity’ and antagonism. Those were my thoughts when I saw recent headlines that President Buhari’s administration gave permission for Africa’s biggest cement producer, Dangote, to export to Niger and Togo in the third quarter for the first time in ten months.
According to the reports, the exemption to Dangote Cement is supposedly seen as a softening of the government’s position on a border closure that started in August 2019, and could open the way for other businesses to fully resume exports across the country’s land barriers. But the fact that it is only Dangote that has been exempted from the country’s border closure, it does not paint a good picture about the President Buhari-led Federal Government, who has been largely seen as a Government that is clothed in nepotism and ethnic favouritsm. Even the BUA Group and a gas company have also received presidential approval to move goods across the land borders, Joseph Attah, the spokesperson for Nigerian Customs, said without providing details according to a report.
By this action, the President Buhari-led Federal Government is indirectly telling Nigerians that Dangote business alone is far more important to the Federal Government than all others in the country. Otherwise, why the partiality? Are the other businesses and importers/exporters like Sunflag Group, Honeywell Group, Erisco Foods Ltd, AFPrint Nig. Plc, Ayoola Textile, 8MC Plastic Nig. Ltd., Deltaplast, Lafarge, Innoson Motors, And Many Others; not important to the Nigerian economy? Such monopoly should never be encouraged by any reasonable Government that truly wants to grow the economy of its citizenry.
These are the sort of actions by the Buhari-led Federal Government that make majority of Nigerians to ask: “Are We Still One?” Someone even asked: “If Dangote is a Southerner or from the Middlebelt, will the President Buhari-led Federal Government exempt him from border closure?”
If the Nigerian authorities by the order of President Buhari had closed Nigerian borders with neighboring countries, including Benin and Niger to curb smuggling and boost local production and encourage the consumption of locally grown produce such as rice, let us also be reminded that this action adversely affected and hurt factories across west Africa, which rely on Nigeria’s market of 200 million people.
The bottom line is that this new order and favouritism given to the Dangote Group, should actually be for all Nigerian businesses and importers/exporters irrespective of who they are. Dangote and the stated few given this exemption on border closure, are not more Nigerian than the Others. President Buhari should be seen to be taking actions that unite us as a nation, and not the ones that sort of divides us on ethnic and religious lines.
Zik Gbemre.
November 11, 2020.
We Mobilize Others To Fight For Individual Causes As If Those Were Our Causes
Sometimes I wonder why would the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government, who was supposedly elected to govern the whole country irrespective or tribe and religion, often take actions and decisions that are best described as ‘triggers for disunity’ and antagonism. Those were my thoughts when I saw recent headlines that President Buhari’s administration gave permission for Africa’s biggest cement producer, Dangote, to export to Niger and Togo in the third quarter for the first time in ten months.
According to the reports, the exemption to Dangote Cement is supposedly seen as a softening of the government’s position on a border closure that started in August 2019, and could open the way for other businesses to fully resume exports across the country’s land barriers. But the fact that it is only Dangote that has been exempted from the country’s border closure, it does not paint a good picture about the President Buhari-led Federal Government, who has been largely seen as a Government that is clothed in nepotism and ethnic favouritsm. Even the BUA Group and a gas company have also received presidential approval to move goods across the land borders, Joseph Attah, the spokesperson for Nigerian Customs, said without providing details according to a report.
By this action, the President Buhari-led Federal Government is indirectly telling Nigerians that Dangote business alone is far more important to the Federal Government than all others in the country. Otherwise, why the partiality? Are the other businesses and importers/exporters like Sunflag Group, Honeywell Group, Erisco Foods Ltd, AFPrint Nig. Plc, Ayoola Textile, 8MC Plastic Nig. Ltd., Deltaplast, Lafarge, Innoson Motors, And Many Others; not important to the Nigerian economy? Such monopoly should never be encouraged by any reasonable Government that truly wants to grow the economy of its citizenry.
These are the sort of actions by the Buhari-led Federal Government that make majority of Nigerians to ask: “Are We Still One?” Someone even asked: “If Dangote is a Southerner or from the Middlebelt, will the President Buhari-led Federal Government exempt him from border closure?”
If the Nigerian authorities by the order of President Buhari had closed Nigerian borders with neighboring countries, including Benin and Niger to curb smuggling and boost local production and encourage the consumption of locally grown produce such as rice, let us also be reminded that this action adversely affected and hurt factories across west Africa, which rely on Nigeria’s market of 200 million people.
The bottom line is that this new order and favouritism given to the Dangote Group, should actually be for all Nigerian businesses and importers/exporters irrespective of who they are. Dangote and the stated few given this exemption on border closure, are not more Nigerian than the Others. President Buhari should be seen to be taking actions that unite us as a nation, and not the ones that sort of divides us on ethnic and religious lines.
Zik Gbemre.
November 11, 2020.
We Mobilize Others To Fight For Individual Causes As If Those Were Our Causes