Ibrahim Musa, the Ministry of Transportation’s Director of Road Transport, announced yesterday that the Federal Government had given the go-ahead for the reopening of the Seme border for the importation of automobiles.
Musa said the event came about as a result of complaints made by freight forwarders working at the Seme border during his remarks at the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, meeting, which was organized by Nigerian and Beninese officials.
“I was here with the former Minister of State for Transportation when the Freight Forwarders asked for the border to be reactivated for the free movement of goods and services” he stated this during the ECOWAS Monitoring Team’s visit to the Seme-Krake Joint Border Post.
“The former minister made us prepare a memo to that effect. It was considered and sent to the government.”
Also speaking, the Customs Area Controller of Seme Border Command, Dera Nnadi said the service has noticed a reduction in its revenue since the importation of vehicles was banned from the land borders.
Nnadi said: “The former Minister of Transportation, responding to some of our requests and from the stakeholders, promised to take them to the Federal Executive Council, FEC, one of them is how to fully open this border.
“The Ministry has informed us that the memo has been written to FEC and it was adopted and that it would be given to the new government, he assured us that all the requests were adopted.”