Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, has criticised immigration officers whom he said harass both legitimate and illegal traders plying the country’s borders.
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday, the Alaafin said restricting movement at the borders was a good policy but hoped it would solve the problem of unnecessary harassment.
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The monarch said this on the sidelines of a visit to his palace in Oyo by a delegation from the Nigerian Chapter of Women in Maritime Africa.
He advised that government should ensure that genuine traders were not affected.
The Alaafin also said that consultations with the public should have preceded the commencement of the policy.
“There are people who are honest traders that are not smugglers. Now such people cannot do their business,” he said.
“If you go to Benin Republic and buy goods that you want to sell, even if it is legitimate trade before the border was banned, the police will still be harassing them.
“There is no counter-measure to know whether honest and genuine traders are being affected.
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“The closure of border is a good thing if we can adequately feed ourselves at home and government puts necessary machinery into motion to see that those cultivating rice have sufficient quantity for Nigerians before enforcing such policy.”
The monarch said that government was generating trillions of revenue yearly from trade across the borders in the South-west, but not all the revenues were accounted for.
