Traders at Ghana’s Kotoku Market have suspended the offloading of Nigerian and Nigerien onion trucks, disrupting a major ECOWAS food corridor and putting Nigeria’s N945 billion onion sector at risk.
The National Onion Producers, Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria (NOPPMAN) says the suspension has stranded trucks for days. Exporters are absorbing losses as the perishable produce deteriorates at the border.
NOPPMAN put the immediate cross-border trade at risk at N14.5 million a year, a figure that sits oddly against the sector’s wider N945 billion valuation from the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The association did not explain the gap.
Aliyu Maitasamu, NOPPMAN’s national president, said the restrictions are causing “significant financial losses to Nigerian onion exporters and transporters and exposing our highly perishable onions to deterioration.”
He said the restrictions violate agreements under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme and the African Continental Free Trade Area. He called on ECOWAS to intervene, arguing that “no market association or group of traders should be in a position to unilaterally determine the movement… of legitimate consignments originating from another ECOWAS Member State.”
Obiora Madu, an international trade expert, said the dispute points to a deeper problem. “The onion dispute is not really about onions. It is about the credibility of regional trade integration,” he said. “We have excellent regional instruments on paper. But integration is not achieved merely by signing protocols.”
Madu warned that the standoff raises the risk of doing business across West Africa. “A trader may have a buyer, a truck, the product, the documentation, and the money, but if market access can suddenly be disrupted by a local dispute, the predictability required for serious cross-border investment disappears,” he said.
He added that if two neighbouring countries cannot settle a contained commodity dispute, the region’s ability to manage larger, more complex trade disagreements comes into question.
Eric Alao, an entrepreneur and lecturer at Lead University, said ECOWAS has failed to resolve tension between Nigerian and Ghanaian traders that has built up over time. He said AfCFTA “is still on paper and not really functioning the way it should” in addressing disputes of this kind.
Alao linked part of the friction to currency movements. A stronger cedi against the naira, he said, is pushing Ghanaian traders to buy onions directly in Nigeria rather than let Nigerian traders supply the Ghanaian market. Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market data puts one cedi at N115.85, supporting his point.
Nigeria produced roughly 1.7 million metric tons of onions in 2024, ranking fourth in Africa and fourteenth globally, according to the FAO. The country supplies onions to Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Ghana, Benin, Chad, Cameroon and Senegal, with Ghana taking the largest share of that regional trade.
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Maitasamu, who also heads the Regional Observatory of Onion in West and Central Africa, acknowledged that the Nigerian and Ghanaian governments have already intervened once. He said the restrictions persist anyway. “Despite these interventions and the resolutions reached, Nigerian onion trucks continue to face restrictions in the offloading of their consignments at Kotoku Market,” he said.
NOPPMAN’s concern is not with the Ghanaian people, citing “longstanding economic, diplomatic and people-to-people relations” between the two countries. He urged ECOWAS to mediate and bring both governments, trade authorities and onion associations to the table.
NOPPMAN has proposed a formal Memorandum of Agreement to govern cross-border onion trade under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme and AfCFTA. “Such an arrangement should establish clear rules on market access, truck movement, offloading, allocation of consignments, and dispute resolution,” Maitasamu said. “We are seeking a permanent and fair system.”
Industry challenges
Maitasamu also flagged structural problems weighing on the sector: high post-harvest losses, limited access to improved seed varieties, weak credit facilities, and no agricultural subsidies for onion farmers.
Poor storage infrastructure forces farmers to rely on traditional methods, he said, and that costs them more than 50 percent of their harvest. Those losses hit farmers directly and drag on the wider economy.
Key Takeaways
The suspension has no confirmed end date. NOPPMAN’s proposed Memorandum of Agreement remains a proposal, not a signed framework, and ECOWAS has not said whether it will step in as mediator. Until one side moves, Nigerian trucks stay stuck at Kotoku Market and losses keep mounting.