The increasing activities of smugglers who bring in foreign food items are threatening the efforts to revamp the agriculture sector especially the rice sub-sector where 29 million jobs are involved, thereby putting the N3.4 trillion investment at risk.
Desire to deepen local rice production and improve the lives of farmers in addition to creating jobs in the sector encourages the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to evolve the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) through which the apex bank provides interventions to producers of rice and that of other commodities.
Over the weekend, rice processors raised an alarm that a total N3.4 trillion investment in rice processing is under threat owing to the activities of smugglers, which if allowed to continue, could saturate the market with foreign rice, a situation which Andy Ekwelem, Director General of Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN said is ca[able of crippling the sector, and render it incapacitated to maintain its 29 million employees.
It would be recalled that efforts to encourage and protect Nigeria rice production led the federal government into restricting the import of rice in June 2015. President Muhammadu Buhari moved further in August 2019 to also order the closures of Nigeria’s borders to prevent smuggling of rice and other food products, in attempts to ensure food self-sufficiency.
These measures are about to be jeopardised by rice smugglers who have flooded Nigerian markets with foreign rice, thereby threatening the rice mills across the country who have a full store but low demand for their produce.
Ekwelem warned that most Nigerian rice mills are going to shut down if low demand for locally grown rice continues.
Large scale rice mills in the country currently employ over 13 million workers directly in addition to at least five workers that draw their livelihood from about 3.2 million cottage mills across the country bringing workers in the sector to about 29 million.
“At a time, the government tackled the menace of rice smuggling but immediately after the activities of #EndSARS movement and reopening of borders by the Federal Government, the markets have been flooded with foreign rice” noted Ekwelem who pleads that the government criminalises the sale of foreign rice.
President Buhari on December 16, 2020, directed the immediate opening of four land borders at Seme, Illela, Maigatari, and Mfun which Ekwelem said smugglers have leveraged to bring foreign rice into the country.
“We have said it many times on the need for government to criminalise sales of foreign rice in the markets and supermarkets. Rice is number one on the list of prohibited products in which the CBN placed forex restriction on.
“It is assumed that any rice you see in this country now, in the markets, shops and even in your homes that is not Nigeria made rice, is smuggled into the country.
“The country is losing revenue because these smugglers are not paying the right duties to bring the rice into the country and this ugly development is killing our economy.
The CBN through the ABP has injected funds in excess of N264 billion through the deposit money banks and other cosmetic financial institutions of which a sizeable chunk of this amount went into local rice production. The investments have also been deepened by integrated rice processors, and cottage rice millers all over the country to over N3.4 trillion.
Ekwelem pleads that it is now a matter of concern that the Federal Government look into the markets in which some of the mills are already producing at half capacity and save the situation to prevent loss of the investments and attendant job loss.
The association DG lamented the poor quality of local rice in the markets which he traced to unscrupulous traders who buy rice from cottage rice millers, and illegally purchase bags from integrated millers for re-bagging the rice from cottage millers and pass them off as products from well-established rice processors.
Ekwelem pledged the association’s commitment to maintaining the high-quality standard in rice production stressing that anyone in the rice processing business who fails to measure up in terms of quality has always been shown the way out.
In the market currently, foreign rice sells between N29,500 to 38,000 while local rice goes for between N25,000 and 29,000 naira
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