FG to shut land borders over rice smuggling

The Federal Government said it will shut land borders in few days to address smuggling of foreign rice and other toxic materials into the country.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh disclosed this while addressing youths at the Guardians of the Nations International (GOTNI) leadership clinic in Abuja.

“As we speak a neighbour of ours is importing more rice than China is importing. They don’t eat parboiled rice they eat white rice. They use their ports to try and damage our economy. I’m telling you now in the next few days you are going to hear that the border has been shut; we are going to shut it to protect you and protect us. You will start seeing all sort of negative things on the internet,” he said.

Ogbeh gave other reason the borders have to be shut, saying “Let me tell you why we need to shut the border, I grow rice, I was the first Nigerian to mill rice free of stones, if you plant rice in certain parcels of land, some poisonous materials gets into the rice.

“There are three kinds of water in their natural state; there is fresh water from the river, salt water from the sea, blackish water. If you go to the Delta in many countries, in South East Asia where they grow the rice, if you plant rice in the same place like four to six years continuously, the quantum of arsenic begins to increase and arsenic causes cancer and that is what they are dumping for us.” The minister also noted that the country has in the last two years reduced rice import by 95 percent and increased the number of rice farmers from 5 to 13 million.