- Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo challenged Atiku Abubakar’s pledge to reopen Nigeria’s land borders if elected President in 2027
- Tunji-Ojo said the borders are not closed, citing a series of reopenings that began in December 2020 and continued as recently as February 2026
- The minister also disputed Atiku’s framing of the Cameroon border closures, saying those shutdowns dated back to Boko Haram’s activities in 2014, not the 2019 trade policy
Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has publicly challenged former Vice President Atiku Abubakar over his campaign pledge to reopen the country’s land borders if he wins the 2027 presidential election, saying the premise of the promise is factually wrong.
In a statement dated August 29, 2026, Tunji-Ojo said Nigeria’s borders are not closed and therefore cannot be reopened, adding that the Nigeria Immigration Service, which falls under his ministry, manages active border crossings across multiple states.
A timeline of border reopenings
The minister pointed to a sequence of official reopenings stretching over several years. On December 16, 2020, the previous administration reopened Seme, Illela, Maigatari and Mfum, with other crossings to follow. Idiroko and Ikom were reopened for goods and services on April 20, 2022. Under the current administration, Kamba and Tsamiya in Kebbi State were reopened in February 2026, linking Nigeria to Niger Republic and Benin Republic respectively.
Atiku had named Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin Republic as countries whose shared borders with Nigeria he intended to restore. Tunji-Ojo rejected that framing, particularly regarding Cameroon. He said the closures at Banki and Amchidé were not products of the 2019 trade policy that shut several borders across the country. Those crossings were shut in 2014 after Boko Haram activity in the Lake Chad Basin forced their closure for security reasons. They reopened in 2019, with Fotokol and Gambaru following in 2021 after joint military operations involving Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
“Folding this separate, security-driven history into one continuous 2019 shutdown misrepresents two distinct issues, trade regulation and counter-insurgency, as a single failure,” Tunji-Ojo said.
Security, not neglect – Tinubu’s minister tells Atiku
The minister also addressed crossings in the north that remain under tighter control, saying those restrictions are deliberate security decisions where banditry or residual insurgent activity has not yet been sufficiently contained. He argued that reopening such crossings prematurely would put traders and border communities at greater risk.
Tunji-Ojo said modern border management requires security, documentation, customs compliance and controlled trade facilitation to work together, and that the choice is not simply between total closure and unrestricted movement.
He called on Atiku to present a concrete proposal if he had a new approach to border management, rather than conflating trade, security and infrastructure challenges into a single issue. “Political competition should not become a competition to rewrite recent history,” Tunji-Ojo said.
Source: Legit.ng