According to the body, the Federal
Government must take the drastic action of shutting the borders
temporarily in order to save indigenous manufacturing firms from
imminent collapse and prevent millions of Nigerians from being rendered
jobless.
The President, CANMPEF, Chief Devakumar
Edwin, who stated this at a press conference in Lagos on Thursday, said
if the Federal Government was desirous of putting an end to smuggling
through the many unofficial routes linking Nigeria from Benin Republic,
it must summon the courage to shut the borders, even if for temporary
period.
He recalled that a similar action taken
by a former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, yielded fruits as the
Beninoise government took immediate action to check the menace of
smuggling and trans-border armed robberies.
Edwin said high level smuggling was
frustrating the efforts of President Goodluck Jonathan and the Minister
of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, to revive the
industrial and agricultural sectors of the Nigerian economy.
He said, “CANMPEF has members across
different sectors, including textile, tiles, shoes and bags,
pharmaceutics, soap, toothpaste, cement, sugar, industrial gases etc and
we have been expanding and making investments in new areas despite the
challenges of lack of power supply, infrastructure deficit and high
financial charges, among others.
“But the biggest challenge we have is
state-sponsored smuggling, especially from Benin Republic, which has
almost totally destroyed our businesses. Most of our members are
shutting down and our membership has shrunk from 145 some years back to
92 presently.”
For instance, he said about 2.3 million
tonnes of parboiled rice were being smuggled into the country from Benin
annually with the attendant loss of revenue to the government and
disincentive to local rice farmers and processors.
Apart from smuggling, Edwin said the
federation was also worried by the anti-Nigerian posture of the
Beninoise authorities by imposing heavy taxes on goods being transported
by road to other countries like Togo and Ghana in clear disregard for
the Economic Community of West African States’ Treaty on free movement
of people and goods.
The implications of this, according to
him, are that Nigeria-made goods are too expensive and uncompetitive in
the ECOWAS market, whereas Benin has no manufacturing base of its own.
If the problems are not addressed on
time, Edwin said over 270,000 direct jobs would be lost in the chemical
and non-metallic products’ sector alone.
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