Ghana President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday said the closure of the land border between Nigeria and the Republic of Benin was a big blow to regional integration.
Akufo-Addo who made this known at a meeting with a delegation from the First Bank of Nigeria at the Jubilee House in Accra said the closure of borders will affect ECOWAS project, Daily Trust reports.
He, said: “We are about to enter a delicate period in the ECOWAS journey looking ahead of the possibility of a single currency and trying to forge greater integration among our economies and at the same time have important security and other issues which confront us.
“We have this business of the closure of the Benin Border, which seems to some people to be a big blow to the ECOWAS project”.
“I believe that there are other considerations that we have to look at and examine to find a way so that we can live in this region in harmony and allow each one of us our national ambition to be fulfilled,” he added. The chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria, Chief Oba Otudeko, affirmed that Akufo-Addo’s government’s economic policies, particularly banking reforms, had made the Ghanaian economy resilient.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has explained that the country’s borders were closed to checkmate three issues, including importation of arms and ammunition, smuggling and human trafficking.
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