Border Management, Regional Immigration Policies, and Nigeria’s Trade Relations within the Framework of West African Regional Integration

Abstract

Nigeria’s borders sit at the intersection of national security, economic regulation, and West African regional integration, yet the interaction between border management institutions, regional immigration policy, and cross-border trade in Nigeria has rarely been examined through a single, theoretically grounded lens. This study addresses that gap by asking how Nigeria’s border management institutions, the ECOWAS regional immigration regime, and the persistence of informal cross-border trade interact to shape both the opportunities and the risks of regional integration. The study is qualitative, relying on a systematic documentary analysis of academic literature, ECOWAS legal instruments, Nigerian government and agency reports, and data published by the National Bureau of Statistics, the Nigeria Customs Service, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control. Transnationalism Theory, as articulated by Vertovec (2009), is applied as the interpretive framework, and its selection is justified against competing frameworks drawn from neo-institutionalist regional governance theory, political economy approaches to informal trade, border security theory, and functionalist integration theory. The findings show that Nigeria’s borders play a vital role in trade facilitation, economic growth, and national security, but that poor inter-agency coordination among the Nigerian Customs Service, the Nigeria Immigration Service, and the Nigeria Border Communities Development Agency, combined with porous borders and the constant interaction between formal regulatory institutions and robust informal trade networks, undermines the effectiveness of border governance. The ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol encourages labour mobility and intra-regional trade but simultaneously generates regulatory and security pressures, as illustrated by the Nigeria-Benin and Nigeria-Cameroon corridors. The study recommends strengthening institutional capacity and inter-agency coordination, investing in surveillance technology, and formalizing border communities into formal trade systems, while aligning national policy more closely with regional frameworks to secure the benefits of transnational flows while managing their risks.