Abstract
One of the most vital border regions in West Africa is the frontier between Nigeria and Benin. The global outbreak of Covid-19 leads to nation and wide lockdown in many countries. The countries and areas that have passed the worst phase of the outbreak or were able to prevent an internal outbreak are eager to reopen as prolonged lockdown could cause damages to the economy and social structure. The Nigeria government has approved the opening of its land borders on December 2020, since its closure on August 2019. This study aimed at determining the impact of border reopening on the Nigeria economy. The study area was Badagry and Apapa Metropolis Lagos State, Nigeria. A random sampling technique was employed, through the use of structured questionnaire on a sample of one hundred and ten (110); artisans (15), traders (50) and farmers (45) were used for data analysis. The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient was used to confirm formulated hypotheses. The study found that the recent border reopening is improving the Nigeria economy and gradually have good significant effect on market prices and in turn increasing the marketing turnover. The study also recommended that there is need to strengthen the border policing and management mechanisms to avoid a relapse into the conditions that led to the closure in the first place.
Highlights
2020 was an unprecedented year, no thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, as the global economy was suspended in second quarter (Q2) and most of third quarter (Q3) 2020 to safeguard human health.Nigeria which shares boundaries with Benin, Niger, and Cameroon closed all its land borders in order to ensure total control over what comes into the country in October, 2019 (Olatunji, 2019), though that was not the first instance
The alternate hypothesis is accepted. This shows that there is significant good effect on market prices since border reopened compared to its closure in August 2019, which led to an inflation rate of 11.02% -15.75 % by December 2020 as the Source: Researcher‟s computation (2020)
This shows that the economy is improving with the recent reopening of borders, businesses are back to normal reason being that people are moving in their goods and sell, and produce and sell by having access to the markets that they used to patronise
Summary
Nigeria which shares boundaries with Benin, Niger, and Cameroon closed all its land borders in order to ensure total control over what comes into the country in October, 2019 (Olatunji, 2019), though that was not the first instance. The cause of this action in the view of the government was the smuggling of rice and other illicit exports of cheaper, subsidised petrol from Nigeria to its neighbours as 10 to 20 percent of Nigeria fuel was smuggled abroad. Other land borders were reopened on 31th December in readiness to trading under the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA), which came into effect on 1st January (Kelechukwu, 2021)
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