It was a beautiful evening at the popular Nkrumah Circle, Greater Accra Region, Accra, when the feet of this reporter graced the ever-busy area renowned for sales and repairs of gadgets.
Nkrumah Circle is one of the six traffic interchanges in Accra and it is named after Ghana’s first president and leading figure in the country’s fight for independence from Britain, Kwame Nkrumah.
A huge statue of Nkrumah with a hand raised as a symbol of solidarity is seated in an elaborate water fountain park. This place is known to be the central point in Accra known for its everyday hustle and bustle.
Circle, as it is known for short, is touted to be the hub for the sale and repair of phones, laptops, and other communication accessories.
This place is likened to Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos State. It is also likely the first place one would be told to see a cluster of Nigerian traders.
Nigerians, as this correspondent learnt, were also found in several popular markets in Accra as the Madina Market, Makola, and Tema, among others.
A narrowed-down search of the stalls of Nigerians led this correspondent to a busy lane called Odo Rice and a street with the name, Tip Toe Lane. Several pockets of shops with several signs and displays of phone and laptop accessories were rife in this area. But none was seen with a name synonymous with a Nigerian.
A cluster of three men conversing in Igbo language in one of the complexes at the far end of Tip Toe Lane brought the long walk and frequent requests to an end.
An importer and retailer of phone and laptop gadgets, Mr Innocent Benjamin, an indigene of Ebonyi State, sat on a plastic stool in front of his office at Tip Toe Lane, Odo Rice, Nkrumah Circle, Accra, conversing in Igbo language with his three other colleagues.
Benjamin, who is married to a Ghanaian, stated that he left Akure, Ondo State, where he lived and worked for 14 years as a trader in nylon and stationeries, to Ghana when the Chinese company he worked for as a wholesaler left Nigeria for Ghana.
“I’ve been in Ghana since 2016. I came in seven days to the 2016 presidential election,” he gently declared.
On his experience living in Ghana, the phone dealer stated that he experienced “weather, security and business comfort.”
He further noted that asides from the challenges faced during the implementation of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, Nigerian traders who traded legally and paid their taxes and necessary dues were not harassed or disturbed by trade unions or government officials.
Benjamin added, “Some shops owned by Nigerians were locked for a year and three months. In December last year, some shops were also locked. But some of the shops were reopened when the shop owners took their documents to the Ministry of Trade. We are closely working with the government so that such does not happen anymore.”
Price and market competition were reportedly the reason for the miff between Nigerian and Ghanaian traders.
Benjamin noted that because Nigerian traders bought their goods in large quantities, they sold them at a reduced price than their Ghanaian counterparts.
He said, “Another problem, although not limited to Ghana, is that when business persons conduct their businesses peacefully and pay tax to the government, the government does not support you during a business crisis. For example, when there is a fire incident or flooding.”
He lamented the destruction of his and other traders’ shops and unsold gadgets in an unexpected flood in 2022 without any aid from the government.
“The goods here are currently got on a loan. I hate when I do my business and I have to keep paying interest to someone. I was not the only one affected by the flood but since we pay tax to the government, we are supposed to receive support from the government during a crisis,” he stated.
“We are happy to escape!” were the first few words a Nigerian retailer in computer accessories, identified only as Onyeaka, uttered when he met with our correspondent.
Onyeaka said he came to Ghana to study at the Zenith University, Labadi, Accra, in 2015, but dropped out due to lack of funds.
“There was no support. I was the one paying my school fees, but due to the stress, I had to drop out. Combining study and business here is difficult,” he stated.
Onyeaka, further corroborating Bejamin’s claim, stated that though Nigeria had been exempted from the GIPC Act, the Ghanaian traders did not accept the verdict, which generated a lot of controversies.
“I know of some persons whose shops were closed in December 2020 and some of them, after their documents were assessed and found to be complete, had their shops reopened in November 2022.
“As a result, Nigerian traders are no longer as many and strong as before in the market. Now, we don’t know where we are standing because the government has announced that Nigerians have been exempted but some of the time, traders are still being disturbed,” he added.
The worry lines on Onyeaka remained as he recalled the tales of events such as the 2020 incident that happened to Nigerian traders in the country.
He stated that some shops that had been locked since 2020 were yet to be reopened.
Despite the challenges, Onyeaka doubted his return to Nigeria. He hopes to return to complete his university study someday but in another country of his dream.
The Nigerian traders our correspondent interacted with all admitted that Nigeria had a big market that favoured the fast sale of goods, but lack of basic amenities and recent rising inflation was a deterrent to returning to their country of birth.
Migration and emigration between Nigerians and Ghanaians had existed since Ghana’s independence.
An American intelligence gathering group, The World Factbook, stated that a few years after Ghana’s independence, the country became known for immigration as it attracted labour migrants from Nigeria and other neighbouring countries to mine minerals and harvest cocoa.
In 1960, immigrants were about 12 per cent of Ghana’s population. But the worsening economic and social conditions in the late 1960s discouraged immigration; as a result, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly Nigerians, were expelled.
It added that severe drought and an economic downturn in the 1970s later transformed Ghana into a country of emigration, with Cote d’Ivoire as the initial destination.
Later, hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians migrated to Nigeria to work in its booming oil industry, but most were deported in 1983 and 1985 as oil prices plummeted.
Many Ghanaians reportedly turned to more distant destinations, including other parts of Africa, Europe, and North America, but the majority continued to migrate within West Africa.
In 2019, Ghana’s Foreigner Identification Management Systems revealed that citizens from about 167 countries resided in the country.
Nigerians are not left out. As of June 2020, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimated that 1.7 million Nigerians were in diaspora.
A specialised market and consumer data company, Statista, stated that in 2021, about 77,000 Nigerians lived in several regions of Ghana. Nigerian male and female residents were 50,329 and 26,632, respectively.
According to the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, 2013 Act 865, Section 28 (Enterprises eligible for foreign participation and minimum foreign capital requirement) subsection two states that non-citizens may engage in a trading (purchasing and selling of imported goods and services) enterprise if they have an investment of not less than $1m in cash, goods or services relevant to the investment.
Due to the implementation of this act, over 600 shops belonging to Nigerians were closed for months in December 2019.
The Nigerian traders were told to pay the $1 million foreign equity/capital base for the Ghana Investment Promotion Council registration.
The shop closures, according to the President of the Nigerian Union of Traders in Ghana, Mr Emeka Nnaji, was an experience they had long endured but resurfaced at intervals.
But Nigeria and Ghana are members of the Economic Community of West African States and are covered by the ECOWAS Promotion of Free Trading Policy.
In August 2020, The PUNCH reported that the Ghanaian Minister of Information, Kojo Nkrumah, defended the imposition of the trade levy on Nigerians, stating that Nigeria had “equally issued executive orders preventing foreigners from getting jobs Nigerians can do.”
He noted that the then closure of the Seme Krake borders in August 2019 by the Nigerian government affected neighbouring countries.
In his response to the shop closure over the non-payment of the trade levy, Nkrumah said, “The compliance exercises conducted in the selected markets revealed gross violations of retail trade laws and regulations by Ghanaians and foreigners, including Nigerians.
“These violations included tax evasion, immigration offences, trading in substandard products, violation of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Law, improper registration of firms, under-payment of business operating permits, falsification of documents, among others.”
In a bid to resolve the issue, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, arrived in Ghana on September 2, 2020, on a “legislative diplomacy” and to meet with the Speaker of the Ghanaian Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye.
Sequel to Gbajabiamila’s visit, a statement was issued on September 5 by the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu, titled, ‘Ghana to Consider Resolutions from Legislative Diplomacy in Resolving Trade Dispute – Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo tells Gbajabiamila… as Nigeria’s Speaker Makes Case for the Amendment of Ghana’s GIPC Act.’
The President of Ghana was quoted to have said that Gbajabiamila’s request for a review “makes a lot of sense.”
He added, “I think the way forward, which is really what matters in situations like this, that is being suggested, one that I find very acceptable, the idea of legislation. Nigeria-Ghana Business Council, which will superintend over trade and investment matters between our two countries, may be long overdue.
“The time has come for us to take these worthwhile steps. I suggested to Mr President (Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari) that it will be a good idea to set up a joint ministerial committee of ministers from both sides who will be responsible for shepherding Ghana and Nigeria issues, reporting to both presidents at any time, and that is how they should be resolved.”
A jointly issued communiqué at the end of the bilateral meeting between members of the two parliaments, led by their speakers, Gbajabiamila and Oquaye, stated that “measures will be adopted to support law-abiding traders to properly regularise their business operations to alleviate the trade challenges occasioned by the alleged closure of the retail stores, because of the ravaging impact of COVID-19 pandemic on businesses and families in both countries.”
But on November 11, 2020, a save our soul letter from the Nigerian Union of Traders Association in Ghana was presented to the Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, requesting a “peaceful and secure evacuation of Nigerians in Ghana” back to Nigeria.
According to the commission’s Twitter handle, this letter was signed by 753 members seeking support to be repatriated to Nigeria.
It further listed the constant and consistent harassment, intimidation, torture and threat to life, more importantly, the total lockdown of their shops.
