The National Association of Nigerian Traders (NANTS), Ghana chapter, has reported that a Nigerian woman and mother of three has committed suicide following the closure of her shops by Ghanaian authorities.
The association made the development known when the leadership visited the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, to seek the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter.
The president of NANTS, Ghana, Chief Chukwuemeka Nnaji, said Mrs. Stella Ogonna Okpaleke, whose shops were locked for her failure to meet strict trading conditions put by the Ghana government committed suicide on September 22, 2018.
Nnaji, armed with a petition to Buhari, called for the intervention of the Federal Government over the alleged maltreatment of Nigerian businessmen in Ghana.
“Regrettably on Saturday, September 22, one of our female members, Mrs. Stella Ogonna Okpaleke, whose shop has been under lock and key by the Ghana authority committed suicide.
She committed suicide because her shop and that of her husband were locked; the information we gathered was that she lost hope of reopening it.
She is from Nnewi Local Government Area in Anambra; we actually don’t know how much she owed, but we learnt that she took loan for her business,” he said.
According to him, the harassment on the Nigerian community and traders in Kumasi, Ghana, is severe.
“It is unfortunate that this woman decided to take her own life,” Nnaji said and called on Buhari to urgently intervene to avert similar incidents in the future.
In her remark, Dabiri-Erewa expressed the Federal Government’s condolences to the union and the family of the deceased.
She appealed to members of the union to remain calm and assured them that the president would intervene in their case to ensure a lasting solution to the problem.
The Ghanaian authority is demanding that traders must have one million dollars as minimum foreign investment capital to do business in Ghana as stipulated in its Ministry of Trade and Industry Act, 2013.
