Nigeria’s $732m trade with Cameroon threatened as crises linger

Current crises in the English speaking part of Cameroon, which accounts for about 19 percent of the population clustered around the South-West and North-West of the country, violate fundamental human rights and have the potential to cost Nigeria over $732 million in foreign exchange.
Nigeria shares its longest border with Cameroon, with nine major trade corridors, and this border presents a great opportunity for Nigerian businesses, and a great risk. A new 403-kilometer road linking Bamenda, Cameroon, with Enugu, Nigeria, is approaching completion, but it is already transforming the lives of local merchants and residents.
A crisis in Anglophone Cameroon will mean that much of the trade that goes on between the two countries will be negatively affected. Nigerians constitute the largest foreign community in Cameroon and most stay in the Anglophone regions, which are culturally and linguistically contiguous with South Eastern and South South Nigeria. Such a crisis will see many of these Nigerians returning home.
Cameroonians will also move across the border to avoid the crisis, creating a refugee situation akin to that which Nigerians created in Northern Cameroon due to the Boko Haram insurgency.
In November 2016, lawyers and teachers took to the streets to protest against what they perceived as marginalisation and the use of French in courts and schools in the English-speaking regions of the country.
The government responded by sending soldiers and military police to suppress the protests. The operatives ended up beating people and detaining many others; including students who later joined the protests. Videos posted by activists online show security forces kicking lawyers to the ground and photographs show how students were packed into trucks and dumped in detention centres.
Following government’s response, protesters began to demand outright break up, or at least a return to a Federal system of government- the kind they had until 1972, when Cameroon abolished the Federal system and moved to a unitary form of government with English and French as the official languages.
Trade between Nigeria and Cameroon is complex, and intricate. Trade “policies” vary from one border location to another and can also be impacted by the seasons, the goods involved, and also the people involved.
Cameroon’s imports from Nigeria have an average statutory duty of 19.10 percent including a Value Added Tax of 17.5 percent and other hidden taxes. Nigerian imports from Cameroon on the other hand are faced with an 11 percent statutory duty inclusive of 5 VAT.