Renewed Rice Smuggling: Won’t FG Heed RIPAN’s Clarion Call?

Renewed Rice Smuggling: Won’t FG Heed RIPAN’s Clarion Call?

By Abdulsalam Mahmud

Again, rice smuggling. Will it ever end? Let me be categorical. When will the illegal importation of rice into Nigeria become history? It doesn’t appear to be soon, if the cover of one of the national dailies I stumbled across on Tuesday, July 4, 2023, is anything to go by.

That is one. Second, any thought of our Africa’s Giant heaving a sigh of relief from the sabotaging activities of rice smugglers anytime soon, is a utopian dream. And that is because the clarion call of the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria, RIPAN, is yet to be heeded.

Endowed with vast arable land for crop and livestock production, Nigeria has always maximized its rice cultivation potential. Yet, one thing has always threatened the local production of the staple food crop, in commercial scale.

It is the smuggling of foreign rice cultivated in Thailand and China, among other world nations steeped in rice farming. According to the newspaper’s cover, an investigation story titled, “Renewed rice smuggling threatens local production,” daredevil smugglers have revived their illegal importation of rice into the country, after a lull.

I could not help but worry about the Nigerian economy, following the tabloid’s discovery that smugglers have stockpiled tons of rice in neighbouring Benin and Niger republics, some of which have found their way to the Nigerian markets. The implication of the foregoing on Nigeria’s rice economy can only be dangerous.

The newspaper extensively captured the agony and misery of our indigenous rice farmers, consumers and mill operators in this chilling manner: “It was learnt that most of the smuggled rice from Benin, Cameroon, and Niger came through Mubi (Adamawa State), Jibiya (Katsina), Bacakka and Kamba (Kebbi-Niger), Wasimi (Oyo-Benin), Babana, Chikanda & Sekobounkperou (Benin Rep and Kwara State), Idiroko (Ogun) and Seme (Lagos).

“Our correspondents in the affected states said there are heightened smuggling activities going on and the impact is already visible in the markets. People in Katsina said the smugglers usually work for their masters by conveying the prohibited goods from Niger Republic through secret routes.

“Abbas Yahaya, a resident of Kofar Guga in the Katsina metropolis, said, “When the customs put up effective surveillance, especially if they smell something fishy, the smugglers employ the services of women and physically challenged to transport the contraband.”

“Another resident, who resides along Natsinta Barracks Road in Katsina and preferred to be anonymous, said smuggling in foreign rice, Spaghetti, Macaroni and cooking oil resurfaced due to lack of jobs and high cost of living in Nigeria.

“Many youths involved in these activities are jobless and have nothing to fall on in these hard times. They mostly move in the night with their headlamps and rear lights off to avoid being spotted by the security agents,” he said. He said with the recent influx, a bag of foreign rice now costs N35, 000 in Katsina.

“Alhaji Mustapha Beto, the General Manager, Beto Rice, a local processing factory in Katsina, said the smugglers were taking advantage of the supply gap in the market. Paddy rice is now acutely scarce on the market as banditry has chased many farmers out of their farms.

“In Lagos, most stores visited by our correspondent have foreign rice adorning every corner of the shops. From Ketu, Mile 2, to Sunday-Sunday Market at Ojodu and Aboru Market, Iyana Ipaja, foreign rice is visible everywhere with a few bags of local rice in most of the stores.

“A store owner, Destiny Okoro at Jimoh Balogun Ojodu, Lagos, said, “I don’t sell local rice here as you can see. All the bags you see here are foreign. To me, local rice is too expensive and people don’t demand for it here. The last time I sold local rice was in September, 2022. So a lot of people prefer foreign rice, which comes in two types- long grain and short grain.”

“The long grain costs 40,000 while the short grain costs 35,000 in his shop. Ogbonna Amos who also has a big store at Aladelola, Ikosi-Ketu, Lagos said while he sells both foreign and local rice, he deals more with the foreign rice based on demand. In Kano, a source at the famous Singa Commodity Market said that the foreign rice smuggling, which had reduced drastically over the years, has now resumed with vigour.

“According to the source, the smugglers have adopted new phenomena of using women who smuggled the rice bit by bit and the marketers thereafter transfer the rice into 50kg bags for sale. Alhaji Usman Garba Badawa, a small scale rice mill operator said his business was about to crumble because foreign rice is selling almost at the same price as the locally milled one”.

Agro-food associations such as RIPAN have remained dogged in advocating workable strategies to curb increased smuggling of rice into the country. Severally, it has warned that the influx of foreign rice into the Nigerian market legally or illegally is not a good idea for the nation’s economic development.

The federal government, however appears not to have summoned the desired political will to implement some portent recommendations RIPAN, over the years, has always offered towards tackling the importation of rice into our dear country. For instance, at a press conference in April this year, RIPAN highlighted ways to make local rice gain comparative advantage over its foreign counterpart.

Andy Ekwelem, Director General of the umbrella body of Nigerian rice processors, at the media conference, called on the government to launch a funding programme to enable rice processors and millers to engage in paddy production through large-scale farming, out grower scheme, and contract farming, among others. “There will be an urgent need to encourage State Governments to ease bottlenecks in the processes of acquiring land for large-scale farming of Paddy rice”.

The RIPAN boss advised the federal government to design and create an agricultural flagship platform that can lend to agriculture at a single interest rate as it is practiced globally. This could be achieved through the creation of a “grain risk fund” that can take care of the exigencies of the grain industry, Ekwelem said.

Amid the surge in rice importation, albeit illegally, into Nigeria at this moment, there is the need for the federal government to become proactive. It should heed the extant calls of RIPAN on how to boost the anti-rice smuggling war, which primarily entails devising effective strategies to tackle Nigerian economic saboteurs fueling rice smuggling – once and for all. That is the surest way to salvage the dwindling fortunes of our local rice farmers and processors.

*Mahmud is the Deputy Editor of PRNigeria, and wrote in via: [email protected].*