Dozens of Ghana-bound vegetable trucks loaded with fresh onions are stuck in a small Nigerian town, their drivers pleading for help as their perishable cargo risks rotting away.
The trucks were stopped in Samia, in Nigeria’s Kebbi State, by suspected armed men. The drivers say they have been detained for nearly three days now, unable to continue their journey through Nigeria, Benin, and Togo to reach markets in Ghana.
The goods come from Galimi, a farming community in Niger, where the drivers buy onions before trucking them across borders.
Everything was going smoothly until they hit this sudden roadblock in Samia.The standoff appears to be payback.
Nigerian onion traders in Accra claim some Ghanaian traders recently blocked them from offloading their own goods. Now, it seems, locals in Nigeria are hitting back by targeting the Ghanaian trucks.
One driver, Awudu Tiajni, described the frustration in a desperate appeal: “We’ve been locked here for almost three days. Our goods are perishing. We are appealing to the government for help.”The onions won’t last much longer in the heat.
Every hour counts, and the longer the trucks sit idle, the bigger the losses for the drivers and the traders waiting for them in Ghana.Accra-based onion trader Alhaji Fuseini Atiiga explained that the real tension goes deeper than this single incident.
He said disagreements have been simmering between Nigerian traders and farmers over how truckloads are shared once they reach Ghana.
About 52 trucks arrive regularly, but Nigerian traders feel one particular Ghanaian association gets the lion’s share, leaving others short-changed.That resentment, it seems, has now spilled over into the roadside standoff in Kebbi State.The affected drivers are calling on Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to step in quickly and resolve the dispute before the situation worsens.
With perishable goods on the line and livelihoods at stake, both sides are hoping for swift diplomatic talks to get the trucks moving again and calm the growing trade friction between the two countries.