Nigeria/Benin border closure big blow to regional integration – Ghanaian president

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo yesterday described the
closure of the land border between Nigeria and the Republic of
Benin was a big blow to regional integration.

Commenting for the first time since the Nigerian government
closed its border with the Republic of Benin on August 20,
Akufo-Addo said the move could negatively affect the regional
integration agenda.

Akufo-Addo, at a meeting with a delegation from the First Bank
of Nigeria at the Jubilee House in Accra, 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”.

Akufo-Addo argued that overall interest of member states should
override individual national interest.

“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.