Group petitions Buhari over rice smuggling

The Rice Processors Association of Nigeria has petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over alleged plans to smuggle rice into the Nigerian market this Yuletide season.

The association said it had evidence, which showed that shiploads of rice were being warehoused in neighbouring countries, waiting to be smuggled into country.

The Chairman of RIPAN, Mr. Abubakar Mohammed, and his Secretary, who is a former Minister of Justice, Chief Micheal Aondoakaa, in a joint statement issued in Abuja, said if the development was not checked, the local rice producing industry would die and over N200 billion investments in the sector would be destroyed.

“Our investigation showed that these products are berthed and warehoused at the Republic of Benin, Niger, Cameroon at very little import duties and then pushed into Nigeria where the perpetrators eventually make unconscionable profit having paid zero duties at our borders,” the association said.

Mohammed said the group had sent a petition to the president through the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, and had briefed the Nigerian Customs Service on the matter.

The association urged the federal government to engage the governments of neighbouring countries where these commodities were warehoused to fashion out antismuggling measures to address the menace in order to save the Nigerian economy and its citizens.

RIPAN added, “if this massive act of smuggling is not checked by the Nigerian government, it will undermine the zeal and efforts of over 25 million Nigerian farmers across the country who had gone back to farming in response to the present administration’s call for diversification of the Nigerian economy via agriculture.”