- The federal government said all foreign rice in the country were imported
- It warned Nigerians against their consumption
- Tests carried out showed most of them were poisonous
The federal government has warned Nigerians to be careful of the consumption of foreign rice as some of them are poisonous.
According to the government on Thursday, December 7, all the brands of foreign rice in the country were smuggled.
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According to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, recent tests carried out on foreign rice and poultry showed that some of them were poisonous because of the duration in which they had been stored before being shipped into the country.
Punch reports that according to submissions by the Consumer Protection Council there has been no tender of ‘Form M’ for rice importation since the beginning of this year.
The form is put in place by the federal government to monitor import goods and also process import duties.
Senator Heineken Lokpobiri who is the minister of state spoke at a stakeholders’ engagement programme on how to stop smuggling of poultry and rice into the country said it was the government’s duty to protect the citizens.
He said: “For imported rice, we don’t know how long it had been in their (exporters) silos. Recently, one country decided to bring in a shipload of rice into Nigeria so that we can use it to support the IDPs (Internationally Displaced Persons) in the North-East, but when we subjected the rice to a test, we discovered that the rice was actually poisonous.
“This means that most imported rice have been in silos for 10 to 15 years and have no nutritional value. So what we have told them is that anybody who wants to support the IDPs or any other person in Nigeria should please use our local rice. The argument is that local rice is more expensive, but we say even if it means buying half bags, do it.
“It is better for us to eat a smaller quantity of nutritious rice than for us to take poisonous shiploads of rice. Also, we discovered that chemicals used for smuggled poultry products are the ones used for embalming corpses. So what we want Nigerians to know is that anybody who eats smuggled poultry products is actually embalming himself while still alive.”
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Operations Unit, Zone B, said it seized no fewer than 3,309 bags of foreign rice from smugglers in November 2017.
Its Comptroller, Alhaji Usman Dakingari, disclosed this on Friday, December 1, in Katsina while briefing newsmen on the activities of the unit.
He said that the unit also seized 209 cartons of spaghetti, 181 bags of sugar and 461 jerry cans of vegetable oil.
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Source: Naija.ng