Buhari extends border closure till January 2020
https://thenationonlineng.net/breaking-buhari-extends-border-closure-till-january-2020/
1. I see many people tweeting about border closure and only mentioning 'rice' as the reason behind the closure. Many have ignored the proliferation of weapons, movement of aliens, free flow of banned/illicit

2. drugs among other criminal activities that happen at our borders. Let me tell a story; sometime in 2017 I was in Lagos. A colleague of mine came to pick me at the hotel I was staying at in Ikeja and we drove to his mechanic in Oregun to service his car since we planned on

3. traveling to Ibadan that day with the car. While the mechanic was draining the old oil from my friends car, we were seated under a shed swapping stories. Few steps away from where we were, three of his fellow mechanics were changing the back suspension of a golf car. They had

4. to take down the back seats to enable them do their job and that was when one of them shouted in Yoruba language. I do not know Yoruba but my friend is fluent in the language and immediately told me that the guy said they had seen something plastered at the back of the seat.

5. By the time both of us got to the mechanics and the golf car they were working on, one of them had removed the item that was properly sealed in very thick sellotape. My friend immediately took it from him and went ahead to unwrap it. What did we find? A H&K p30 9mm pistol.

6. How did a German pistol get to the back of the seat? My friends mechanic who happens to run the entire place said he would call the police, we both immediately showed him our ID cards and he said "O...ok oga mi. Na to comot am for my shop". I asked him who brought the

7. car to his shop and he said the vehicle belongs to a female customer who happens to work in a bank not far from his shop. My friend first had to wait for them to finish with the golf, we then took it to the office where a report was filed. We then took the mechanic along with

8. us to the lady's office. After introductions, we told her why we came. She immediately broke down in tears saying she and her family know nothing about the gun. That her husband 'went to Cotonou' two months ago and bought her the car. I already suspected that was

9. what happened. We asked her how to meet her husband, she called him and then gave the phone to me. The husband invited us to come to his office also at Ikeja. After investigations; interviewing both the husband, the car dealer who took him to Cotonou etc. we realized that

10. they bought that vehicle without knowing that there was a firearm properly hidden in it. This is just one unique case, do we know the amount of weapons confiscated weekly by law enforcement at our land borders? Do we know the amount that have entered unchecked? The decision

11. to shut down the border was not reached by the president alone; the ONSA, customs, police, immigration, army etc all deliberated for months before an agreement was reached and eventually authorized by the president. So while there has been a spike in revenue generated by

12. customs, we have seen a downturn on movement of weapons, aliens and drugs. Until our neighbors restrict the movement of every item on our banned list from heading to our borders, THE BORDERS REMAIN CLOSED. We hold all the aces; THEY NEED US MORE THAN WE NEED THEM.