Nigeria/Benin border closure big blow to regional integration - Akufo Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo yesterday described the closure of the land border between Nigeria and the Republic of Benin was a big blow to regional integration.

Commenting for the first time since the Nigerian government closed its border with the Republic of Benin on August 20, Akufo-Addo said the move could negatively affect the regional integration agenda.

Akufo-Addo, at a meeting with a delegation from the First Bank of Nigeria at the Jubilee House in Accra, said: "We are about to enter a delicate period in the ECOWAS journey looking ahead of the possibility of a single currency and trying to forge greater integration among our economies and at the same time have important security and other issues which confront us.

"We have this business of the closure of the Benin Border, which seems to some people to be a big blow to the ECOWAS project".

Akufo-Addo argued that overall interest of member states should override individual national interest.

"I believe that there are other considerations that we have to look at and examine to find a way so that we can live in this region in harmony and allow each one of us our national ambition to be fulfilled," he added.

The chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria, Chief Oba Otudeko, affirmed that Akufo-Addo's government's economic policies, particularly banking reforms, had made the Ghanaian economy resilient.