Ghanaian government breaks silence on Nigerian traders shops closure

The Ghanaian government says its decision to shut down Nigerians businesses is not out of place and that the move is justified.

OnyxNews Nigeria recalled how Nigerian traders in Ghana cried out over their shops closure.

President of the Nigerian Traders Union in Ghana, Chukwuemeka Nnaji, in an interview with NAN, had said shops belonging to Nigerians in Accra were locked up by Ghanaian authorities who demanded evidence of their Ghana Investment Promotion Council (GIPC) registration.

The requirement for GIPC registration is $1 million minimum foreign equity, while registration fee is 31,500 cedis. Nnaji said Nigerians are being dehumanized and humiliated in Ghana.

He urged the Nigerian government to come to their aid.

Reacting to the development, Boakye Boateng, head of communications in the country’s trade ministry, in an interview with Starr News, a Ghanaian publication, said Nigerians were given more than enough of time to meet the conditions given to them.

He stated that the authorities tried it best to be fair to Nigerians so much so that Ghanaians began to think they were siding with the Nigerians. He added that it unfair of the Nigerian traders to complain of insensitivity.

He said the traders, who have been served notice for over a year, were pardoned in December following the intervention of President Nana Akufo-Addo.

“It cannot be that we’ve been insensitive. If that is what they’re saying, I’ll be disappointed because I’ll rather say they have rather been unfair to us as a regulatory body because we have given them more time than enough to the extent even the Ghanaians thought that the ministry was not on their side or the ministry wasn’t ready to even enforce law,” Boateng said.

“So, it’s very surprising to me for them to say that we’ve not given them enough time. If you recall as far back as December last year, these shops were locked, the president intervened and we asked that the shops be re-opened because the very law that gives GUTA the right to be the sole traders in our market, that same law requires that a certain group of people are those who can go and do law enforcement and not you, so allow us to do our work.

“They complied, the shops were opened. Since then we have given them an opportunity to regularise the document and submit it to us for verification, that has not been done. Now, this exercise started from Abossey-Okai on Monday. Because we have never been to Abossey-Okai for this exercise, when we went there we did not just start locking shops. We went there, we inspected the shops and we gave them notices that in 14-days they should ensure that all their necessary documentations be complete. These people have been served notices for over a year now.”

This comes two months after gunmen broke into the Nigerian high commission in Ghana and demolished a building under construction. Which the government of the country later apologised and promised to reconstruct the building that was demolished.