‘Our husbands are leaving us’ – Elubo residents petition Akufo-Addo to open land border amid mammoth demo

Thousands of residents of Elubo, a border town in the Western Region, marched through the streets of the town to protest the government's decision to keep land borders closed.

Protestors say the closure of the land border with the Ivory Coast was having both economic and social implications on their lives.

One woman told the press covering the protests that “our husbands are leaving us” because they are unable to take care of them.

Elubo residents, like many residents of border towns, are reeling under the stagnation in economic activities following the border closure.

After a mammoth protest in Aflao last Friday, August 27, the residents of Elubo also staged a similar event on Thursday, September 2, 2021.

Ghana’s land borders together with the sea and air borders were closed by an Executive Instrument on Sunday, March 22, 2020.

But goods were allowed to pass to and fro trading countries.

The country’s major international airport was, however, opened to passengers on September 1, 2020, after strict COVID-19 testing measures were put in place.

The protesters are appealing to President Nana Akufo-Addo to set up an antigen testing regime at land borders like he has done for the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) to allow for free movement of persons.

Meanwhile, the Director of Communication at the Presidency, Mr Eugene Arhin, has announced recently that President Akufo-Addo will review the restrictions on land border movement if need be.

Below is the petition they have presented to the President

PETITION TO HIS EXCELLENCY, THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF GHANA, NANA ADDO DANKWA AKUFO-ADDO, TO CAUSE TO REOPEN GHANA’S LAND BORDERS NOW.

Your Excellency, our petition is as follows:

1. That, the prolonged closure of our land borders has caused businesses to collapse because all businesses in our border towns are rooted in these closed borders.
2. That businessmen and businesswomen in Elubo are not able to repay their loans due to drastically reduced patronage of goods and services coupled with expired goods. Most of them have left the border communities in order to evade arrest in respect of loan repayment. This is almost rendering the same townships dormitory communities.
3. That, most affected parents are not able to cater for their wards’ education owing to the prolonged border closure in Elubo. Some tertiary students whose parents are now unable to cater for their tertiary education are now school dropouts. This has dangerous ramifications on a developing society like ours.
4. That, the closure of our land borders especially that of Elubo, is instead detrimental to the very human health we are trying to protect. Your excellency, people troop in and out of Ghana via Elubo through unapproved routes without getting tested for COVID-19. This unequivocally defeats the purpose for which the borders were closed initially.
5. That, crime is on the increase in our border areas. The youth whose day-to-day economic activities depended on the border now look to crime and other social vices as alternatives to making ends meet.
6. That, Ghanaian Cocoa Farmers whose farms are on Ivorian soil is no longer able to work on their farms thereby causing a huge financial loss to both farmers and government.
7. That, all economic activities in our border communities have completely grounded to a halt, and life in the same communities is completely dead.

DEMANDS

Your Excellency, we humbly make the following demands/seek the following reliefs;

• That, an antigen testing regime be instituted at our land borders just as instituted at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) to allow for free movement of persons. Your Excellency, statistics show that the traffic flow at the KIA far outweighs that of our land borders.
• That, our land borders be reopened to free movement of persons just as our neighbouring countries, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso have done with respect to the decision made at the 58th Meeting of the ECOWAS Heads of States on the 23rd of January, 2021 which was chaired by Your Excellency.

We pray Your Excellency to kindheartedly consider our petition and help return life to our border communities by reopening our land borders.