CEO INTERVIEW How B/Haram crashed Nigeria/East, Central Africa trade routes – Ashemi
Alhaji Ahmed Ashemi is the Sole Administrator, Borno Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (BOCCIMA). In this interview with Daily Trust, the politician-cum-business tycoon reviewed multi-billion dollar trans-border trade between Nigeria and East, Central and Southern Africa before, during and after the Boko Haram insurgency through Nigeria’s North-east, and delivered the verdict: Trans-border trade has slumped to zero point.
Borno and the entire far North-east region used to be a commercial hub connecting West, Central and even East Africa for ages when the volume of trans-border trade taking place from Maiduguri and other Northeast locations was immense before the advent of the Boko Haram insurgency. How has the insurgency impacted on this trade and entire economy?
You are talking as if there is any economy now. The economy of Borno, which used to be the nerve centre of the age-old commercial dealings among the three regions, has collapsed due to the insurgency. As you rightly mentioned, prior to the insurgency, Maiduguri and the entire Borno region used to be second to Kano in terms of the density of commercial activities and volume of trade in the entire Northern Nigeria. However, due to the insurgency, economic activities, most lamentably the trans-border commercial activities, known to be conducted in the region of Borno have slumped virtually to zero point.
The factors that led to this economic activities’ slump are, first, the insurgents initially started extorting money from businessmen on the pretext of assistance for Islamic preaching. They would call you on phone and ask you to contribute one million, two million, three million naira and so on to the preaching cause. Giving them didn’t mean it was enough on your part. They would still come back to you several more times. This way, the insurgents gradually eroded the capital base of almost all the businessmen in Borno. This is one factor.
The other factor which, in fact, contributed more to the commercial activities’ slump, is the closure of the three main trans-border routes - if Maiduguri-Bama-Banki, MaiduguriDikwa-Gamboru Ngala and MaiduguriMonguno-Baga are all open; and probably Maiduguri-Damasak, is also open, our economic recovery would be automatic. Our businessmen will not even need any intervention from anybody to recover their losses and bounce back to their prosperous business ventures. Unfortunately all these routes are closed.
How immense and prosperous was the volume of trade then?
Prior to the insurgency leading to the closure of these routes, goods manufactured all over Nigeria and those goods imported, especially through the sea ports and other West African land borders, massively flowed to Maiduguri, where they were loaded in trucks and transported to as far south as Congo Brazzaville and as far east as Eritrea. This should give you an idea about the volume of trade through the land borders between Nigeria and the Central and East Africa…
What then was the value of that volume of trade in terms of dollars?
Well, I don’t want to mention any amount that can be challenged by anybody; I have not conducted any investigation on that. But it was incontrovertibly a multi-billion dollar trade. You may agree with this estimation if you consider the massive volume of goods gravitating from Nigeria and other West African countries towards the East and Central African markets.
You are still talking on the volume of trade?
I told you that enormous volumes of goods were transported through Maiduguri to Congo Brazzaville and Eritrea. That means Maiduguri market used to feed Southern and Central Africa and a large part of East Africa and even the Horn of Africa with goods and services from Nigeria and, to a very considerable degree, goods from other West African markets. With the closure of these routes, on which our businessmen are mainly dependent, because we don’t have serious manufacturing activities taking place here, as our businessmen concentrate their resources in the buying and selling of goods, local and trans-border economic activities slumped virtually to zero point.
What were the goods traded on?
Those commodities comprised consumables like sugar, rice, noodles, cement, iron rods, toiletries, textile materials, plastics, foams for mattresses and several others were all loaded to those African regions. We call such goods ‘Giwa-giwa’. One truck used to load about 60 tonnes worth of goods. Businessmen from those regions used to come with their cash to buy the goods and load them on trucks. Those businessmen used to come from the Republic of the Sudan, Cameroon, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo to purchase such goods. When they transport these goods to their respective countries, they also distribute them on retail to businessmen in other countries bordering them. That was how goods from Nigeria flowed to southern, eastern and central African markets.
All these impressive economic activities slumped between 2009 and now. How can they be resuscitated?
The first thing to be done is opening and securing those trans-border routes, because many experts who talked to us about the issue, and we also know it, say if these routes are open and people are conducting their usual business activities, we don’t need anything from anybody to revive our economy. We can do it ourselves without any assistance because we are naturally endowed traders. What government can do now to rejuvenate the trans-border trade between Nigeria and the East, Central and Southern African countries through Borno, which has been the main goods collection and distribution market, is to intervene by giving some grants or soft loans to some of the businessmen whose businesses are completely destroyed by the insurgency and are now idle, doing virtually nothing, to enable them pick up again.
In Monday Market, Baga Road Market and Gamboru Market, all in the Maiduguri metropolis, for example, I know of businessmen who used to have, as their individual capital bases, between one hundred and two hundred million naira before the insurgency. Today they cannot boast of two million naira; today some of them leave from hand to mouth, because their entire capital has been eroded and their sources of business have been blocked and they have been plunged into pathetic situations.
Commercial communities like Bama and Damasak, which have been key centres of the age-old trans-border trade, yearn to revive these commercial activities, but the security agencies insist the terrain through which the trading routes cut are still infested with the insurgents. How would you advise
about this situation?
We cannot blame the security agencies, particularly the military, so much. They have done their best. For instance, by 2015, if there hadn’t been a change of government in Nigeria, and the direction and the way of fighting insurgency had not changed, you wouldn’t be sitting here interviewing me now, because Maiduguri would definitely have fallen to the insurgents. So, in this regard, one can only thank the security agencies. That is one. Secondly, it is their duty to combat these pockets of insurgents that have become irritants. We don’t know how to fight them. The security agents are the ones empowered to do so. They are the ones who know how to do so, they have the wherewithal and instruments for the combat. They should, therefore, take it upon themselves as an assignment to ensure that these routes are opened. They can do it.
Maiduguri-Damaturu-Potiskum down to Kano or Jos, even at the peak of the insurgency, were open routes; and people were plying them, transacting their businesses. Why not apply the same miracle used on that route to secure other economically important routes. I know it may require more technical and military expertise to be able to do that.
What roles should those Eastern, Central and Southern African countries play in the resuscitation of the trade?
Look! We were giving, and they were taking. So, the role they should play, in my opinion, is limited. First, they don’t have the industrial base that Nigeria has; secondly, they don’t have the ability to import goods like Nigeria. Let me give you an example, in the 1980s, I was working with a government factory producing leather; and I tried to sell leather materials to one of the neighbouring Francophone countries. It was at the stage when we were about to seal the deal that I discovered that their central banks do not issue letters of credit to their creditors abroad. Only the Central Bank in France can do that for them, because their currencies are tied to the French franc. So only France determines what they buy formally. Therefore, France controls how they spend their money. But the individual businessmen in those countries have their money, they were not under any control and Nigeria was very generous on trans-border travel between it and them. So they could just come into Maiduguri, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto or Birnin-Kebbi with their cash, buy whatever they wanted to buy and slide back to their countries.
So what roles can such people play other than to only secure the trans-border routes on the side of their countries? They should also put some policies in place to encourage businessmen to sell goods to them; their customs and excise tariffs should also be friendlier to goods coming in from Nigeria. These will provide sufficient security to Nigerians taking goods to them, as used to obtain over a long time.
Their governments should formulate friendly policies for goods coming into their countries from Nigeria, because we are assisting them. If you go to Ndjamena (Chad Republic), a bag of Semovita, which probably used to sell at four thousand naira equivalent, with this insurgency and the closure of the routes, the price may have shot up to about six thousand naira. I haven’t been to Ndjamena of recent to confirm this, but I think I have enough experience in business to know how this insurgency can constitute a factor that can influence prices in the upstream countries.