By Ere-ebi Imisi
The Executive Director Seven Oceans Oil and Gas Limited Mr. Samuel Alabi has stated that the closure of land borders with neighbouring countries is a welcomed development which has the tendency of creating more opportunities for Nigerians.
While reacting to the border closure by the federal government, Mr Alabi noted that the closure cannot have come at a better time than now for business minded people stating that it will afford us the opportunity to harness our untapped potentials.
According to him, some Nigerians may consider this FG action as detrimental but on the contrary he stated that in the long run it will be of immense benefit to Nigerians.
“Why is it a good thing, it is a good thing because with the closure of the border, opportunities that we have been sending outside can now be harvested here in-house’’ he said.
He cited an example on the revenue and job lost on the processing of cashew nut stating that in 2015, Nigeria exported about 170,000 tonnes of raw cashew to other countries.
“I discovered about one hundred and seventy tonnes of raw cashew nut were exported from Nigeria and if juxtapose the amount used in exporting and the fact that we can process those cashew nuts here, we would have created jobs and employed because of the number of persons we would have engaged.
“There are different value chains of the product from salting, peppering, breaking with different ways of spicing cashew nuts but we send these things out. We send them out and they employ other people to do these things and bring them back for us to buy, this is not good for our economy’’ he explained.
Alabi stated that he was aware of the initial discomfort and hike in prices of goods as he however urged young people to embrace this as an avenue to create wealth by filling up the vacuum imported products will generate.
“We are not unaware of the cry in hike of prices on some items, these initial discomfort are intended to spur people. Young business minded people will wake up from their sleep and try to take advantage of increased cost of rice by going into rice farming that will lead to competition. The Christmas season is fast approaching and demand for rice will be on the increase.
“The high cost of rice should encourage people to go into rice farming and there will be rice everywhere, next the number of rice farmers will increase, supply meets demand and once supply meets demand what happens to price it will drop.
“These are simple facts of economics, price will come down. Again, it is a tough time but a good choice”, he said.
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