• Home
  • Anti-Corruption
  • Fact-Check
  • Economy
  • National
    • Government
  • Security
  • Features
  • State
  • Event
Sign in
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Password recovery
Recover your password
Search
  • Home
  • About
  • Adverts
  • Contact
Sign in
Welcome! Log into your account
Forgot your password? Get help
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
PRNIGERIA PRNigeria News
PRNIGERIA PRNIGERIA
  • Home
  • Anti-Corruption
    • Peter Afunanya DSS Spokesperson

      UPDATE: DSS, EFCC to Broker ‘Ceasefire’ Over Tussle for Lagos Property

      DSS Boss Magaji Bichi and EFCC Boss Abdulrasheed Bawa

      24 Hours After Tinubu’s Inauguration, DSS, EFCC Reignite Inter-Agency Rivalry

      Chairman EFCC Abdulrasheed Bawa

      Matawalle’s $2m Bribe Hoax: EFCC Will Not Bandy Words with Suspect

      How Gov Matawalle ‘Diverted’ N70bn Using Over 100 Firms – EFCC

      Media-Policy Centre Partners CLEEN Foundation on Anti-Corruption

  • Fact-Check
  • Economy
    • Hammed Ibrahim Ali Customs Boss

      Nigeria Customs Service Initiates Fast Track 2.0 For Rewarding Compliance

      VIDEO: Mixed Reactions on Fuel Subsidy Removal as Long Queues Returns…

      French, Kwara Sign MoU on Knowledge Transfer, Livestock Development

      President Buhari Assents to NDIC, Three Other Bills

      Buhari Swears in Ismail Agaka, Six Others as Federal Revenue Commissioners

  • National
    • Aliko Dangote, Alh Sunusi Alhassan Dantata (his Grand Father that gave him 500,000 naira), Alh Hassan Sunusi Dantata (his Uncle) and a family member

      PRNigeria Fact-Check Uncovers What Dangote Brought to Lagos to Start Business…

      VIDEO: Mixed Reactions on Fuel Subsidy Removal as Long Queues Returns…

      ASUU-STRIKE

      Finally, FG Defeats ASUU as Court Justifies No Work, No Pay…

      Hajj 2023: NAHCON Boss Inaugurates Assessment and Award Committee

      Board Appoints Acting Comptroller-General for Immigration Services

    • Government
      • ASUU-STRIKE

        Finally, FG Defeats ASUU as Court Justifies No Work, No Pay…

        Hajj 2023: NAHCON Boss Inaugurates Assessment and Award Committee

        President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Photo: Twitter

        First Inaugural Address By President Bola Tinubu 29 May 2023

        President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Photo: Twitter

        In inaugural address, Tinubu preaches Unity, Commitment to Nation-building

        Wife of the President-elect, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, at the inter-denominational service

        Nigeria’s commonwealth will be deployed for Nigerians – Remi Tinubu declares…

  • Security
    • Obidient Obiajulu Ujah protesting in Plane

      Drama as ‘OBIdient’ Supporter who Opposed Tinubu’s Inauguration at Airport ‘Fights’…

      Hammed Ibrahim Ali Customs Boss

      Nigeria Customs Service Initiates Fast Track 2.0 For Rewarding Compliance

      Nigerian Troops at Damboa after Eliminating Boko Haram on June 2, 2021

      Top ISWAP Commanders Killed as MNJTF Troops Eliminates 55 Terrorists in…

      Peter Afunanya DSS Spokesperson

      UPDATE: DSS, EFCC to Broker ‘Ceasefire’ Over Tussle for Lagos Property

      DSS Boss Magaji Bichi and EFCC Boss Abdulrasheed Bawa

      24 Hours After Tinubu’s Inauguration, DSS, EFCC Reignite Inter-Agency Rivalry

  • Features
    • NAHCON Leadership and Inaugural Hajj Flight 2023

      court Judiciary

      Court orders lawyer, Pastor, Others to pay Tinubu, APC N17m for…

      HAJJ Pilgrims pilgrimage NAHCON

      JUST IN: Benue Pilgrims Travelling to Abuja Involved in Accident

      Buhari’s 100 Million Identity Gifts to Nigerians

      Tinubu, Atiku and Peter Obi

      Court Orders Consolidation of PDP, LP, APM’s Petition

  • State
    • SPECIAL REPORT: Sorrow and Blood; Dehumanizing Tales of ‘Phone Snatching’ in…

      Late sultan ibrahim Dasuki

      After 26 Years, Sokoto Govt Clears late Sultan Dasuki, Approves Benefits…

      Gov Wike Constructs Police Tactical Operations Centre

      Prof Alaro Bags Intellectual Impact Award in Saudi Arabia

      Kwara Gov excited as Prof Alaro bags ‘intellectual impact’ award in…

      Gov Abdulrahaman abdulrazak of Kwara

      Kwara Govt Orders Chinese firm to Vacate Mining Site along Ilorin-Ogbomoso…

  • Event
    • Gen Samuel Adebayo CDI

      CDI Adebayo, Other Senior Military Officers Bag National Honours

      Badejo-Okusanya Bows Out as APRA President After 7 Years

      DG NITDA Bags Honorary Doctorate from California Metropolitan University

      APRA 2023 Conference: Zambia President Urges PR Practitioners to Project Good…

      APRA Urges PR Practitioners to Promote Creative Industry in Africa

Home Economy RIPAN and Burden of Tackling Rice Smuggling
  • Economy
  • Features

RIPAN and Burden of Tackling Rice Smuggling

By
Abdulsalam Mahmud
-
May 11, 2023
imported rice
imported rice

RIPAN and Burden of Tackling Rice Smuggling

By Abdulsalam Mahmud,

Nigeria is one country where the smuggling of foreign goods of all kinds is rife. The country’s porous land borders are gateways for criminals better known as smugglers to bring in all sorts of contrabands.

Are the contrabands only injurious to the citizens’ physical and mental health? Absolutely no! Some of them, like small and light weapons, whose proliferation across many parts of the country is frightening, are tools for snuffing out lives.

They have since become the prized assets of terrorists, armed bandits, and kidnappers, to mention a few of the daredevil criminals terrorizing many hapless Nigerians. As a staple food, rice production in the country would have since become a gold mine.

But producing it locally, especially on a massive commercial level, has become an uphill task. It is being threatened by smuggling. Less nutritious rice varieties cultivated in other parts of the world are finding their way to Nigeria.

In recent years, the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria, RIPAN, has waged a war against foreign rice, flooding many markets across the country. Though relative successes have been achieved in tackling the menace of rice smuggling into the country, the menace still thrives.

Between January and September 2016 alone, the Nigeria Customs Service seized 5.85 million kilogrammes of rice smuggled in through the land borders, a Nigerian newspaper, in 2017, reported. That translates to 117,000 bags in 50kg packages, the newspaper observed.

“The spokesperson for the NCS, Mr. Joseph Attah, stated that the service made rice seizures 1,933 times in 2016. The total duty paid value of those seizures is N1,299,433,530 ($3.5m)

“Between January and June 2017 alone, the NCS had already intercepted large scale smuggled rice 1,156 times. The seizures have combined DPV of N746, 977,000 ($2m).

“Yet, findings suggest that these seizures are mere tips of the iceberg compared with the actual amount of smuggled rice which makes it into the Nigerian market,” the tabloid asserted in its published story titled, “Inside Nigeria’s multi-billion naira rice smuggling business”.

According to a post on JOURNALISTS FOR TRANSPARENCY, a news blog, Nigeria exported more food than it imported, in the 1960s. The blog equally observed that, “In 2011, Nigeria was the world’s second biggest importer of rice, bringing in about 2.5 million tons of rice.

“In early 2013, in an effort to regain food self-sufficiency, the government increased the tax on imported rice from 50 to 110 percent, a 60 percent hike. The tax was meant to encourage locally produced and processed rice and wean the country off imported rice altogether before a full ban in 2015”.

Equally, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, around December 2021, was reported in the media to have said that about two million metric tons of rice is currently being imported or smuggled into the country.

Vice Chairman of the Committee, Muhammad Enagi, disclosed this at a meeting with multi-stakeholder group on rice council advocacy bill promotion.

The interactive meeting was organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – Global Environment Facility (GEF), in collaboration with Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN), among others. Enagi stated that Nigeria’s rice rose from 3.7 million metric tons in 2017 to 5.0 metric tons in 2021.

He said, ”In spite of this, 6.7 million metric tons of rice is consumed in Nigeria annually, resulting in a deficit of about two million metric tons which is either imported or smuggled illegally into the country”.

According to him, “Nigeria should consider putting in place a National Rice Development Council and a comprehensive national rice development roadmap that will guide the country into self-sufficiency and export”.

Not too long ago, RIPAN, at a press conference in Abuja, last month, also bemoaned the persistent importation of rice into the country. Andy Ekwelem, Director General of RIPAN, was speaking some few days after an investigative report by Economic Confidential on, “How Illicit Rice Importation is Threatening FG’s Agricultural Sector Interventions”.

Ekwelem lamented that, though the country’s rice industry may have enjoyed considerable support from the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, all is still not well with the agro sub-sector.

He noted that rice smuggling across the land borders is the bane of the rice sub-sector, in Nigeria.

He said that because rice is a staple food for Nigerians, smugglers take it as an a-rated trade item and consequently smuggle millions of tons of finished packaged rice from India, Thailand and other southeast Asian countries into the country, from Nigeria’s porous borders with Benin Republic, Niger Republic and Cameroon.

But the gospel truth is that Nigeria is endowed with arable land for the cultivation of any kind of food crop. It should have little to do with smuggling of agricultural products. This reality has long been affirmed by both local and international agricultural institutions.

A worried Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank (ADB), but as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Adesina, in 2016, observed that, “Nigeria has no business importing rice… We have a massive amount of land, we have water, we have cheap labor, but we’re using these things to make a market for others.

“To make Nigeria a world producer of food, we had to reposition agriculture away from ‘farming’ [towards] a money making business.”

It is however exciting to know that RIPAN, among other stakeholders in Nigeria’s rice industry, has been unrelenting in its crusade of ending the importation of rice into the country. This, it has done with an uncommon panache, patriotic zeal and matchless commitment.

At the press conference it held last month in Abuja, the agricultural body had a word for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President-Elect, on how to swiftly tame rice smugglers and their ‘vicious’ business.

The incoming administration must devise a new strategy of dealing with these economic saboteurs if the Government really wants the huge investments of both the Government of Nigeria and the private sector in the rice subsector to survive, it said.

Above all, RIPAN is hoping that Tinubu’s administration will follow through some of the laudable policies of the current administration, as well as design and launch new ones to further strengthen and sustain the Nigeria rice industry.

*Mahmud is the Deputy Editor of PRNigeria, and wrote in via: babasalam1989@gmail.com*

seo services guest post

Kidnapped School Children

Yauri FGC Students, Kebbi (Freed)
The last victims released spent 707 days from June 17, 2021 - May 25, 2023


Baptist School Students, Kaduna
695 days 18 hours 47 minutes 1 second

Tegina Islamiya Pupils, Niger (Freed)
Spent 88 days from May 30, 2021 - August 26, 2021


Report By: PRNigeria.com

 
VISIT OUR OTHER WEBSITES
PRNigeria.com EconomicConfidential.com PRNigeria.com/Hausa
EmergencyDigest.com PoliticsDigest.ng TechDigest.ng
HealthDigest.ng SpokesPersonsdigest.com TeensDigest.ng
ArewaAgenda.com Hausa.ArewaAgenda.com YAShuaib.com
  • TAGS
  • Rice Smuggling
  • ripan
Previous articleDSS Unveils Gender Mainstreaming Policy
Next articleFCT Minister seeks Harmonization of Revenue Collection
Abdulsalam Mahmud

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

Obidient Obiajulu Ujah protesting in Plane

Drama as ‘OBIdient’ Supporter who Opposed Tinubu’s Inauguration at Airport ‘Fights’ Court Registrar

Hammed Ibrahim Ali Customs Boss

Nigeria Customs Service Initiates Fast Track 2.0 For Rewarding Compliance

VIDEO: Mixed Reactions on Fuel Subsidy Removal as Long Queues Returns to Filing Stations

Nigerian Troops at Damboa after Eliminating Boko Haram on June 2, 2021

Top ISWAP Commanders Killed as MNJTF Troops Eliminates 55 Terrorists in Borno

HAJJ Pilgrims pilgrimage NAHCON

Security, Youth Empowerment: Nigerian Pilgrims Set Agenda for Tinubu

French, Kwara Sign MoU on Knowledge Transfer, Livestock Development

Don’t Patronize Unapproved Eateries – NAHCON Warns Pilgrims

Pantami took digital economy on global map – Perm Sec Alo, Others Pay Tributes

DSS-EFCC Rivalry: Tinubu Sends Strong Message to DSS Operatives

Peter Afunanya DSS Spokesperson

UPDATE: DSS, EFCC to Broker ‘Ceasefire’ Over Tussle for Lagos Property

ASUU-STRIKE

Finally, FG Defeats ASUU as Court Justifies No Work, No Pay Rule Against Leturers’ Strike

Hajj 2023: NAHCON Boss Inaugurates Assessment and Award Committee

  • Home
  • About
  • Adverts
  • Contact
© 2020 PRNigeria. All Rights Reserved.
X whatsapp