• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Insecurity pushing businesses in northern Nigeria to extinction, says Kano Chamber of Commerce

Insecurity pushing businesses in northern Nigeria to extinction, says Kano Chamber of Commerce

As the police and security agencies in the country step up action towards unveiling the motive of the gunmen who stormed the family house of Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, in Kano, in the early hours of Monday, the Kano Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture (KACCIMA), says the mounting insecurity in northern Nigeria is gradually pushing the economy of region into total collapse.

The chamber is therefore appealing to the Federal Government to re-tool the nation`s security arrangement with the view to urgently addressing the state of insecurity that is disrupting the flow of trade and investment into the region.

Usman Darma, 1st deputy president of KACCIMA, while speaking with BusinessDay in Kano, described the invasion of Nanono’s family house and the eventual kidnapping of his younger brother as unfortunate.

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He lamented that the economies of most states in the northern part of the country are on the verge of total collapse as a result of what seems to be the inability of the nation’s military and security agencies to stop the tide.

“From every indications the security situation at hand in the northern part of the country, when compared with other parts of Nigeria, is very serious, and we in the Kano Chamber believe that this is the time for the Federal Government to put everything it takes into addressing this challenge. At the moment we have got to a critical point because this development has become the major hindrance to the ease of doing business in the region,” Darma said.

“As you know we have been experiencing an increase in kidnapping, and banditry in all the states in recent times, and this has been tremendously affecting the structure of the economy of the region. The structure of the region`s economy is built around towns and villages which are market points where transactions in goods and services take place, but as at today this structure is being destroyed by the insecurity that is unfolding,” he said.

He said the chamber as a matter of urgency appeals to the Federal Government to do everything possible to put an end to this negative trend as the development is killing businesses, and if it continues, in no distance future the entire economy of the region might collapse.

“We believe that President Muhammadu Buhari is doing his best, but we are calling on him to do more in this regard. The volume of trade and investment is down already,” Darma said.

“Secondly, the insecurity is also compounding the already bad state of poverty in the region because more and more people are being pushed out of places where they are doing their businesses, particularly people involved in farming, which you know the region is the hub,” he stated.

Darma said that the insecurity has also impacted heavily on the region in terms of loss of lives and property, adding that the prevailing lack of peace in the region has been a huge disincentive for investment.

According to him, KACCIMA has also noted that the delay in the reconstruction of work of the on-going Kano to Abuja Highway which the Federal Government is developing is one of the factors compounding the growing insecurity.