Dr Lord Mensah, an economist and lecturer at the University of Ghana (UG), has said the EndSARS protests in Nigeria could have some unintended adverse impacts on Ghana’s economy.
One of them being the major influx of Nigerians into the country, given the fond relationship between both countries and also for the fact that like Nigeria, Ghana is an anglophone country.
“If the protests, continue the tendencies that it will spill over to our part of the region is very high. Remember that if you look at Nigeria’s boundaries its mainly French speaking countries. They are like Ghana, that is why anytime they move from their country to the east side of their direction, they come to Ghana because they will not be comfortable in Benin or Togo because of the language barrier, so they move straight to Ghana,” he said.
“We are going to have a lot of Nigerians moving to Ghana and we don’t have the capacity to absorb them as we speak now. We are going to have a lot of spill overs and effectively it can affect other economies within the subregion,” he added.
On the economic front, Dr Mensah believes that the influx of Nigerians could worsen Ghana’s already ‘bad image’ in the eyes of some members of the international community.
His view is on the basis of Ghana being recently banned by the EU for money laundering activities, for which Dr Mensah attributed to the activities of a high number of Nigerians living in Ghana.
“If you look at the recent money laundering ban that we had, it is mainly because of the influx of Nigerians operating in that space who are now in Ghana,” he stated.
The EndSARS protest, which has been ongoing for over two weeks now, was quite peaceful until soldiers on Tuesday night opened fire on protestors killing and injuring a number of them.
