Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has pledged to reopen Nigeria’s land borders and expand port infrastructure in the south if elected president in 2027.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate, addressing his supporters in a video shared online on Friday by ADC chief Dele Momodu, linked the two promises with a single objective: to facilitate the flow of goods across the country and revive trade-dependent livelihoods, especially in the North and Northeast.
At the borders, Atiku blamed the 2019 lockdown for destroying cross-border trade with Nigeria’s northern neighbors and driving young traders out of business.
“The northern states border Cameroon, Chad, Niger and the Republic of Benin.
“And all those borders are closed. All our young people who trade between these countries, transport goods, do this and that, everything we call cross-border trade is a legitimate business,” Atiku said.
He said traders who once ran businesses worth millions of naira and employed others, had fallen into bankruptcy and unemployment.
“All the young men and women who used to have capital of 10 million, 20 million, and employed two, three other people, and then they all went bankrupt and were unemployed. How can there be security?” asked.
“So I said I am going to reopen the borders and I will do it,” he added.
On ports, Atiku said he had already started addressing the issue by holding talks with European shippers on the development of ports in the south and southeast.
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“During the last campaign I traveled to Europe to discuss with shippers and naval development companies how we can jointly develop the ports of the South and Southeast so that there is balance when it comes to the import and transport of goods,” he said.
He illustrated the ongoing cost of that imbalance with his own business, a factory in Yola, Adamawa State, that relies on containers shipped from Lagos.
“So if I leave my container in Calabar, Uyo or Port Harcourt, it will only take me 24 hours to get it to Yola.
“But right now it takes me at least two months to get my container out of Lagos because you have to cross from the southwest, go northeast and then there is not even a road,” Atiku said.
He insisted that his proposals were not new ideas but a response to concerns Nigerians had long raised about the cost of transporting goods and the underdevelopment of southern ports.
Nigeria’s land border policy has changed repeatedly since the 2019 lockdown, which the Buhari administration justified as a measure to curb smuggling of rice, poultry, oil, weapons and drugs, while boosting local agriculture.
Four posts were reopened in December 2020 (Seme in Lagos State, Illela in Sokoto State, Maigatari in Jigawa State and Mfun in Cross River State), and the Tinubu government reopened the Tsamiya and Kamba corridors linking Kebbi and Niger Republic in February 2026, alongside assurances from the Customs Service of stricter controls against smuggling.
However, several border posts remain restricted or under strict control.
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