[BREAKING] Nigeria reopens borders after 16-month closure

President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the immediate reopening of the country’s land borders, after nearly 16 months of closure.

This was disclosed on Wednesday in a tweet via the Twitter handle @NGRPresident.

“President Buhari has directed the immediate opening of four land borders: Seme, Illela, Maigatari, and Mfun,” it said.

Nigeria’s land borders have been closed to its West African neighbours for more than a year as part of efforts to check smuggling of contraband into the country. A partial closure was initially announced on August 22, 2019.

Markets Reporters reported on Wednesday that the Democratic Republic of Congo had overtaken Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, to become the second-largest intra-African trade economy.

The 2020 African Trade Report, released by the African Export-Import Bank on Tuesday, said the value of total intra-African trade fell by 5.23 percent in 2019, reducing its overall contribution to overall African trade from about 15 percent in 2018 to 14.4 percent in 2019.