The Chairman, G.U. Okeke & Sons Limited, Chief Godwin
Ubaka Okeke has appealed to President Muhammdu Buhari to open land border as a
New Year gift to poor Nigerians.
Okeke said that the land border closure disrupts legitimate
economic activities of many poor Nigerians who engage in cross border trades as
life wire for their survival and the continued closure beyond January would
bring mire suffering and hardship for the people.
He made the appeal in a statement yesterday , saying that
the prolonged land border closure cannot be the open sesame to tackling
persistent smugglings of goods through our porous border routes, adding
"Admittedly, these nefarious smugglings cripple our country’s economy".
"These informal activities provide jobs opportunities
for the sustenance of the poorest of the poor and their families and contribute
to no small measures to gross domestic product of the national economy".
"The border closure are adversely affecting our
boundary neighbours, other western African countries like Togo, Ghana, Bokina
Faso, Mali etc are all bearing the brunt. These countries are planning counter
measures against Nigeria, like expelling Nigerians in their countries. Thus
whatever gains we might have made by the boarder closure might be lost and
outweighed by retaliatory counter punch"
"Mr President, I am motivated in my appeal to you to
reopen the borders on account of my unbearable pity for the poor masses and the
youths of this nation. I am sure you share this concern with me. Mr President's
numerous peoples oriented programmes bear witness to this fact.
"One of the ways to assists our youths is to turn them
from being job seekers to job creators. I will therefore propose that the last
six Months of our graduate youths service scheme participants should be for
entrepreneurial, creative and innovative training for job and wealth creation.
"Deserving Youths Corps members on completion of their service year would be
given start-up capitals of about a Million Naira (N1Million) each to pursue
their dream projects. This scheme is similar to the excellent and applaudable
work the Elumelu foundation had been doing among African youths. Thus the
schemes go a great deal for the alleviation of poverty in the land.
"I want to thank Mr President for the speed with which
the second Niger bridge is being built and hope that it will be concluded in
the next two years for commissioning by Mr President. When completed it will alleviate the
suffering of Nigerians of South-South, South East, North East, North Central
and Nigerian public in general who used the bridge mainly to access their homes
and businesses" Okeke said .
"However, it is generally known that there exist
wealthy big time smuggling cartels with inside dealings with few bad eggs of
government officials. The illegal operations of these cartels might still be on
going in our numerous unmanned border points.
"This is even the more reason the government is called
upon to not only weed out few corrupt officials in the Ministries, Departments
and Agencies saddle with protecting our borders. But more importantly, to
strengthen the capacity of customs and immigration to discharge their official
duties, funding for logistics and trainings should be of top priorities. More
personnel recruitments to increase Manpower, is advocated" Okeke stated.
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