Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been entreated to deepen collaboration among security forces in the border regions of the block to ensure trade sustainability.
In addition, each country on the regional block must heighten intelligence gathering by providing requisite reporting infrastructure to people in communities under threat report effectively to authorities.
The call was necessitated by threats of terrorism along Ghana’s northern frontiers, which shares borders with Burkina Faso, which experienced a coup d’état in January this year.
The coup, expert feared could make Bawku, which is closer to Burkina Faso, and experiencing internal conflicts, a home to terrorists.
Dr Joseph Obeng, Trade Unionist, and Mr Wallace Akundor, a Customs Tax Administration Expert, told the Ghana News Agency that the situation required that both local and regional collaborations be heightened.
ECOWAS leaders have, therefore, been asked to make security a priority by deploying forces to take control of the cross-border trading routes as economic activities among regional blocs occurred mostly by road.
Dr Obeng said: “We have to make sure that the member States put security ahead of everything, because if insurgencies or criminal activities are high in the region then our business will be in jeopardy.”
“It’s very important that they take the security issues very seriously, especially regarding trading. So, whatever we do to ensure that we have safety in our trade routes so that we can ply trade in peace and harmony, we have to do it,” he added.
Mr Akundor also explained that like any other threat, terrorism was disruptive to the business and trade environment as it brought fear and panic.
“People are going to be afraid to get out and do their normal business, so it has implications. There’s going to be instability, nothing can be predictable, because as the attack persists, we can never predict what’s going to happen next,” he said.
He emphasized that: “The whole production that would have gone to trade, whether it’s in agriculture or local production would be affected because the news of threat of terrorism can fuel a lot of instability and insecurity, which could also affect the global trading chain.”
The former Commissioner of the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) said there must be security consciousness among individuals at the community level, nothing that: “It should be ‘see something, say something,’ so that every unusual thing that’s observed in a community is reported.”
“We need a certain infrastructure for that reporting, and a credible intelligence gathering scheme, involving the people in the locality, Chiefs, opinion leaders that will trickle down to the business level,” he added.
