The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) has faulted the decision of the Federal Government to shut down the nation’s borders due to the uncontrolled level of smuggling of rice and other commodities.
In an exclusive interview with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos, President General of the MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju said that rather than shut down the borders; the federal government should repair the roads leading into and out of the ports. He said that many investors have abandoned Nigeria for ports of neighbouring countries like Cotonou in Republic of Benin and Lome in Togo, because of the bad access roads to Nigerian ports, even as he pointed out that these investors would be willing to return if the infrastructures are in place.
According to him, there is a cabal behind rice smuggling ring and shutting down the borders would not deter them from carrying out their illegal activities.
Adeyanju however said that shutting down the nation’s borders would not affect dockworkers. He said that the union had few years ago withdrawn its members from the border posts, especially the Seme border, due to the sensitivity and porousity of the border.
He said, “for the past two years that rice has not been coming through the borders, have we not been eating rice? Why are they closing the border because of rice, let us concentrate on our roads, if our roads are good, nobody would concentrate on smuggling rice, we have Nigerian rice that everybody is used to.
“Go to the market, I am eating Nigerian rice, so you cannot tell me that it is not available, let government close down all the borders, it would not stop the smuggling because the rice smugglers are cabals, they know how they would smuggle their rice into the country”
The MWUN boss confessed to Shipping Position Daily that the absence of rice vessels berthing at the seaports has affected his members who are dockworkers; he however said that the union has become used to it.
“It is part of discipline, there are some advanced countries that also started like this, they closed their eyes and decided that they would now allow certain cargoes to come in through their borders, did they die? Since the government stopped importation of rice, did we die? We are still eating rice; we have it in this country”
“We do have our members at the borders but because the border is very peculiar and very sensitive for the union to manage, I cannot put three iron inside the fire at once, our borders are very sensitive and we are trying to be very careful, in the past we use to have MWUN at the border posts, but when I discovered the way they were behaving over there I had to disband them”, he said.
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