The nagging issue of multiplicity of checkpoints along the Lagos-Seme stretch of the Lagos-Abidjan ECOWAS trade corridor formed the subject matter at a maritime industry engagement in Lagos, last Friday, 31st October , 2025,;at the 20th anniversary of the Baggage Maritime Magazine.
Delivering a lecture on the topic ‘Badagry: Nigeria’s Gateway to ECOWAS Trade Facilitation,’ frontline customs broker, Barr Ejike Metu, added a strong voice to the trending robust discussion on the need to reduce or eliminate what he described as the war-like checkpoints scattered along the route leading inward and outward the ancient town of Badagry, a community endowed with rich natural boundaries for security purposes along the lagoon, using the Gbaji Bridge as a beat. Highlight of Metu’s submission at the occasion is that Customs anti-smuggling activities should start from the Seme border post and end at Gbaji.
He suggested that the royal fathers should see it as a responsibility they owe their subjects to better these situations, with one accord they can say no to multiple checkpoints which have presented the area as a war zone”.
In his speech, “They can specifically scrap Agbara Customs checkpoint as this has become an albatross to the commercial development of this area. They can assist the hapless freight forwarders to ask the customs management to intervene in some of their stringent policies on transit and delivery of goods along this ECOWAS corridor which has eluded them in the time past”.
The Agbara Customs checkpoint is, therefore, not necessary as it remains a snare and a thorn in the flesh for those living in this area for so many reasons.”
”The joy of the presence of any government establishment in any community is the uncommon development it will bring to the area. With Seme border becoming a customs revenue generation point, Badagry, thirty- -three years after, should be thriving in commerce, warehousing, storage facilities and hospitality businesses. In other words, Badagry should be a major trade hub.
Heavy duty trucks used for haulage to convey goods on transit from Benin to Nigeria should be relieved of the incessant falling and damages if the system allows them to discharge their contents at any warehouse as soon as they cross the Gbaji joint checkpoint as the final outgate notwithstanding the tasks at the frontier.”
Metu condemned what he referred to as a proliferation of unapproved agencies identified flaunting different colours of uniforms mounting road blocks for different purposes.
These agencies include the regular Police, Mobile Police, Quarantine Services, Customs and Immigration which are prominent at the border as a result of the policies of government.
”In Nigeria, the Customs plays a stringent and vital role at the borders unlike in the United States of America where the Immigration Service is more prominent because of the rate of illegal migrations to America on a daily basis.”
Metu regretted the present deplorable condition of the road from Badagry Roundabout to Seme border and urged the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) and the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to take precautionary measures to keep the newly reactivated Mile 2 to Badagry stretch safe and free.
In his presentation on “Why Lagos Stat Should Invest In Badagry”, The Editor-in-Chief of the Magazine and the writer of the book "Violation of ECOWAS Protocol ", Chief Okey Chikezie Iroegbu, traced the historical, economic and administrative importance of Badagry to the present situation of neglect.
According to history, Okey Iroegbu said “Badagry was a British trading post which was established there in the 1820s, and Badagry developed as a palm-oil port for Egbaland to the north and as an importer of European cloth.
In the 1830s it attracted freed slaves from Freetown (Sierra Leone) and in 1842, it became the site of the first European mission”.
Mr. Iroegbu added that “With her large harbour landscape, the ancient kingdom has every attribute for great economic potentials. With large agricultural and fishery options, to trade route, tourism and a once upon a time slave colony, Badagry has every reason to be endowed with economic opportunities”.
He noted that “The kingdom is mapped as tourism divisions in Lagos and left for historians, students and the people of these areas as laboratories of yesterday’s dreams and abodes for cemeteries of dead imperialists’ and colonialists who buffeted these places, raped the land and carried away the founding human resources and left Badagry as ghost lands”.
However, Mr Iroegbu suggested that Badagry should be seen as a viable economic hub for the promotion and development of Tourism, Oil and Gas and Maritime economies must prepare the minds of the indigenes to the emerging new investments in Tourism, Oil and Gas and Maritime investments.
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