Nigeria-Benin border closed: a difficult year for truckers

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

It has been a year since Nigeria decided to close its borders with Benin and its neighbors to fight against insecurity and smuggling. More than a thousand truckers were stranded. Many left and found another way to convey their goods.

Publicity

With our special envoy to the Benin-Nigerian border, Jean-Luc Aplogan

Sèmè-Kraké, a Benino-Nigerian border post, is the main entry and exit point for travelers, trucks and goods. The fleet of trucks inside the juxtaposed checkpoint is no longer congested . Lucien Gohoungo, representative of the truckers makes a statistical point: “  There were at least 700 of them. A year later, there are only 50 semi-trailer trucks left. They found another way. They bring their goods through the port  ”

Instead of staying eternally stranded, with a load rotting under the sun and rain and a swelling parking bill, the truckers have chosen to bring their goods to Nigeria by sea. It has been so since the 7th. November 2019: the new road is now the port of Cotonou.

Truckers get stuck

The truckers who still hang out at the border are those who have been abandoned by the owners of the goods they transport, they need money to pay the parking taxes ... This is the case of this truck driver: “  Here is my truck. Nothing is right. I have been here for 9 months. I no longer have any hope  ”.

He spends his days under his truck or under a straw hut with his colleagues. The truckers' representative is never far away, he always has hopes for the reopening: “  We wait, one day God will enter their hearts and the end will come . "

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