The government took a landmark step against smuggling of rice into our country recently but the media is largely silent about it.
I expect all journalists and TV cameras to focus on especially the Nigeria-Benin border. Save for the first day when a few TV stations showed pictures of long queues of vehicles, nothing might as well be happening at the border. But I expected media frenzy in the form of 24-hour news coverage, commentaries, and news from obscure border areas that smugglers might potentially exploit.
News had since come that the president of Benin Republic, Patrice Talon, visited President Mohammadu Buhari in the course of an event in Japan. Now, it wasn’t the day our government threatened to shut the borders over smuggling activities that it carried it out. It had said if smuggling of rice that we produce in abundance continued it would be compelled to take this step. When the customs service issued this threat last year, I applauded on this page.
Where does all of this concern President Buhari? The President of Benin Republic visited him over the border issue. What our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, told the press was what we knew of what transpired in the course of that meeting. He said Talon told the President that what was going on at the border had brought hardship to his country and he appealed that the decision should be rescinded.
This brings me to the matter of how we conduct foreign affairs here. Do we have set goals, targets, or measures to be deployed in phases against nations that misbehave towards Nigeria? Most nations have set measures they take against external threats categorised as Low, Medium, High, Very High, Extremely High.
The foreign affairs minister should draw up different measures to meet different threats to our interests. The Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, a think-tank, should assist the government in this regard. When we have such details spelt out, the conduct of foreign affairs would be predictable, neither ad hoc, nor a situation whereby diplomats don’t know what to do when they are confronted with certain situations.
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