Rice processors want Tinubu’s government to curb smuggling

The Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN) has urged the incoming administration of President-elect Bola Tinubu to check smuggling and economic sabotage if Nigeria is to attain food security.

Andy Ekwelem, the director-general of RIPAN made the call during a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to him, the border restriction policy of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had effectively stemmed cases of food importation between August 2020 and 2021.

He explained that rice importation dropped from 1.24 million metric tonnes in 2014 to 438 metric tonnes as of 2022.

He said: “As of the last quarter of 2014, official rice import into Nigeria from Thailand was about 1.24 million metric tonnes of rice; by the end of 2015, these imports had dropped to about 644,131 metric tonnes, and by the end of 2016, it dropped to 58,260 metric tonnes. In 2017, the imports further dropped to 23,192 metric tonnes but by 2022, they dropped to an all-time minimum of 438 metric tonnes.

“Of course, the reason for the drops which to us at RIPAN, is a positive development is nothing more than Mr President’s hard stand against food importation.”

He further disclosed that in 2020 during the COVID era, Nigerian farmers produced as much as 8.2 million tonnes of paddy rice and another 8.4 million tonnes in 2021.

He said paddy rice produced by Nigerian farmers began to decline after the borders were reopened in 2022 and smuggling commenced again, causing a drop in the volume of paddy offtake by the rice processors and millers.

“It is on record that upon the reopening of our borders, official rice import to the Benin Republic from Thailand rose from a meagrely monthly average of 5,000 MT in 2019 to a monthly average of 26,861MT in 2022.

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“RIPAN hopes that the incoming 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.

“Key areas that we will want the new government to take emergency actions on are; repositioning the Nigeria Customs Service for effective manning of the borders. The smuggling of rice across the land borders is the main bane of the Nigeria rice sub-sector.

“The incoming administration must devise a new strategy of dealing with smugglers and economic saboteurs if we want our food security programmes as well as the huge investments of both the government and the private sector in the rice sub-sector to survive.

“There will be a need for a funding programme to enable processors to engage in paddy production through largescale farming, out-grower scheme, and contract farming.

“There will be an urgent need to encourage state governments to ease bottlenecks in the processes of acquiring land for largescale farming of paddy rice,” he added.

Commenting on the high cost of locally produced rice, Eluhaiwe attributed it to an increase in the cost of production and the impact of inflation.

“Prices of inputs of production have skyrocketed, and we now have fewer farmers returning to the farm due to security crisis.

“But the percentage increase in the price of a bag of rice is still low compared to other commodities,” he said.