The Federal Government has announced several interventions in recent years to help stimulate productive activities around the cultivation of rice, cotton/textile and automobile production but with not much to show as result.
A simple look at the 15 countries that imported the highest dollar value worth of rice during 2018 by the World Top Export (WTex) reveals that Benin Republic ranks sixth on the scale with a total import valued at $930.5 million which translate to N335 billion.
The first five countries are China, US$1.6bn (6.5% of total rice imports); Iran, $1.21bn (4.9%); Saudi Arabia, $1.2bn (4.9%); Indonesia, $1bn (4.2%); and United States: $959.5m (3.9%).
China has a population of 1.4bn people, Iran 81m, Saudi Arabia 32m, Indonesia 264m and the United States has 325m people, while Benin Republic has just 11.2m people.
Nigeria with a population of 200m was ranked 148 out of the 218 countries evaluated on the index with $5.4m translating into N1.9bn.
Interestingly, Niger Republic which is also shares border with Nigeria but is a landlocked country with a population of 21.4m, twice the population of Benin Republic, is ranked 84 on the import chart with a total import of $43.8m translating into N15.7bn.
Similarly, Cameroon, another neighbour to Nigeria with a population of 24 million people, also more than twice that of Benin Republic, sits at 39 on the chart with an import value of $179m which translates to N64.6bn.
Another industry that has played a dominant role in the manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy but has also been plagued by this sabotage is textile.
Nigeria loses a staggering $325m every year due to evasion of customs duty and Value Added Tax by smugglers of textile materials, the Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA) has disclosed.
Chairman NTMA, Mr. Abiodun Ogunkoya, who gave the hint at a news conference in Lagos, stressed that around 85 per cent of the $1.4bn worth of textile materials that flood the nation annually are smuggled in.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had in a wholesome move to curtail dumping, implemented an access to foreign exchange on the official window on 41 items, later 43, which it feels the country has the capacity to produce sufficiently.
Following the earlier restriction of official forex supply to textile importers to boost local cotton/textile production, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) set up a committee for the revival of the country’s cotton, textile and garment industry.
While setting up the Textile Revival and Implementation Committee (TRIC) in Abuja, the Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, said the target is to revive and set up at least 50 textile companies by 2023.
“Nigeria remains a big market for the textile industry. We need to reclaim this industry from smugglers. We need the support of customs and other authorities,” Emefiele said.
The Federal Government, Wednesday, resolved to deal decisively with rice smugglers whose activities, according to a World Bank disclosure, cost Nigeria a whopping $5 billion annually.
The NCS said it had reinvigorated anti-smuggling operations, adding that in 2018, a total of 5,235 seizures with duty paid value of N61.54bn were recorded.
The seizures include arms, ammunition, over 59 containers of Tramadol and other controlled drugs and 320,709 bags of foreign rice amounting to N4 billion worth of rice seizures.
Africa’s richest man and President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, succinctly captured the frustration at a recent roundtable when he said: “What is killing us the most is smuggling. Smuggling is what has actually killed most of our policies. There is no country that is surviving with a neighbour like Republic of Benin. Because their main job is to facilitate smuggling.”
A recent World Bank report on smuggling showed that about N1.45 trillion worth of goods are smuggled into Nigeria annually through Benin Republic.
Emefiele said: “We are investigating those accounts and as information becomes clearer and as we can clearly say they have committed the offence, we will go to the next round which is to forbid any Nigerian bank from opening any account with them.”
He said smuggling and dumping have sabotaged economic policies in Nigeria.
Emefiele said, “Nigeria is very good at making brilliant economic policies, but we have identified smugglers and dumpers as those who sabotage these policies and we will deal with them. In our strategy, we will not bother ourselves because there is an agency of government responsible for border control.
“But If these people pass through the border control, we will use the instrumentality of being the regulator and head of the banking system, to get the banks to provide all the details of these smugglers and dumpers, we will investigate the accounts, and if they are found culpable in economic sabotage bordering on dumping and smuggling in Nigeria, we will not only block their accounts, we will close their accounts in all the banks in Nigeria.
“We will close the accounts of the owners of such companies, and we will close the accounts of top management members of those companies because they know that their companies are involved in smuggling and they should not be supporting such.”
