Nigeria Tells Atiku the Land Borders Are Already Open

NIGERIA · POLITICS & TRADE

Nigeria’s presidency says the country’s land borders are already open, rejecting a campaign promise by 2027 opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar to reopen them. The unusually sharp rebuttal turns one of Nigeria’s oldest economic grievances into an early election battleground.

What the presidency actually said

“The facts are straightforward: Nigeria’s land borders are already open,” the State House said in a statement issued on Friday, 28 August. It said the government announced the reopening of most of the country’s land borders on 14 March 2024 and has not reversed that position.

The statement, signed by media adviser Sunday Dare, also cited the Kamba border in Kebbi State, which it said President Tinubu opened in February 2026 “with attendant economic and diplomatic gains.” Customs officers formally reopened the Kamba and Tsamiya corridors that month, freeing about 2,000 trucks stranded at the frontier with Benin and Niger.

Then came the attack. “Atiku is unhinged now, and he would say or announce anything to attract and deceive the politically gullible,” Dare wrote, adding: “An open border is not an uncontrolled border.”

The statement leaned on security to make its case. Citing the Global Terrorism Index 2026, it said about 41 per cent of terrorist attacks occur within 50 kilometres of an international border and 64 per cent within 100 kilometres, arguing that troops on Nigeria’s northern corridors reflect border security, not closed borders.

What Atiku promised

Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president who won the African Democratic Congress presidential primary in May, has made border trade a plank of his 2027 campaign. He pledged to reopen any land borders still shut and to ease the importation and movement of goods.

He argues that border closures forced many businesses to shut down and deepened insecurity. He has also promised to develop seaports in Nigeria’s south, where the dominance of Lagos harbours has long been a grievance for coastal states such as Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa.

His claim has a kernel of truth. The presidency itself says only that “most” borders were reopened in 2024, leaving open the question of which crossings remain restricted and why.

How the borders became a campaign issue

In August 2019 the late President Muhammadu Buhari closed Nigeria’s land borders, saying rampant smuggling of rice, fuel and other goods was undercutting local producers. The blockade lasted about 16 months and strained relations with Benin and Niger, whose economies depend heavily on trade with their giant neighbour.

Abuja began unwinding the closure in December 2020, reopening four major posts: Seme on the Benin corridor, Illela and Maigatari toward Niger, and Mfum toward Cameroon. A phased reopening followed, and on 14 March 2024 the Tinubu administration announced that most remaining land borders were open again.

The Kebbi corridors are the newest chapter. Customs area controller Mahmud Matawalle-Ibrahim said the Kamba and Tsamiya posts reopened in February on presidential approval, after talks with Benin to let legitimate cargo move through to Niger’s Tunga Jado border.

Why it matters beyond the campaign

Nigeria’s frontiers with Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon carry one of Africa’s densest flows of informal trade, from petrol and rice to livestock and textiles. Seme, west of Lagos, is among the busiest land crossings in West Africa.

Open and predictable borders are also the backbone of Nigeria’s commitments under the African Continental Free Trade Area, the pact meant to create a single market across the continent. Every closure undercuts Abuja’s claim to leadership of that project.

Customs Comptroller-General Bashir Adeniyi has framed the recent reopenings as economic diplomacy: regulated crossings, the service argues, give better oversight and intelligence than closures that push trade into smugglers’ hands.

What is still unverified

Neither side has published a definitive list of which crossings remain restricted. Traders’ groups have long reported that some posts operate with de facto limits even after formal reopening, and the presidency’s “most borders” phrasing does not settle that.

The terrorism statistics are quoted from the presidency’s own statement and were not independently checked against the Global Terrorism Index 2026 report. Atiku’s camp had not responded to the “unhinged” remark at the time of writing.

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