By Reuben Abati
I got a frantic call from Ghana the
other day. It was from Lillian. The Ghanaian authorities were shutting down
shops belonging to Nigerian traders at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra .
The Inter-Governmental Task Force set up by the Government of Ghana to regulate
retail trade had arrested about 50 Nigerians. Many of them were detained.
This is not a new matter. Across
In 1994, Ghana introduced a law called Ghana Investment
Promotion Centre Act (GIPCA), Section 19(3) of which says “in the case of
trading enterprise involving only the purchasing and selling of goods, which is
either wholly or partly owned by a non-Ghanaian, there shall be an investment
of foreign capital or its equivalence in goods worth at least $300, 000 by way
of equity capital and the enterprise shall employ at least 10 Ghanaians.”
Non-Ghanaians are also required to have a residence permit
and a business permit. In the past six years, the Ghana Union of Traders
Association (GUTA) has been urging the GIPC to take action against foreigners
involved in retail business in Ghana who
they accuse of pushing them out of business. There are over 1, 000 retail shops
owned by non-Ghanaians across Ghana ,
most of them by Nigerians. Aggrieved Ghanaian traders want those shops shut
down.
In June, the GIPC issued a notice asking the foreigners to
obey the provisions of the GIPC Act or close down their shops by July 27. Most
of the Nigerian retailers cannot afford $300, 000 – in Naira, that is about
N108 million! The businesses they run do not need up to ten staff. These are
people selling phones, textiles, electronics, or recharge cards or engaged in
some other small-scale enterprise in the markets.
Whereas the Ghanaian government has said the law is not
targeted at Nigerians, the truth is that Ghana does
not want foreigners in the retail business. Foreigners are not allowed to drive
taxis in Ghana or
run kiosks. Ghana ’s
trade protectionism raises a question: how far can an ECOWAS member-state go in
protecting the sovereign interests of its nationals in the context of binding
ECOWAS protocols?
The governments of Ghana and Nigeria should
take the on-going development seriously and prevent a breakdown of
people-to-people diplomacy. In Kumasi ,
members of the Ghanaian Traders Association reportedly attacked Nigerian
traders and the latter are also threatening to retaliate. It shouldn’t get to
that.
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