President Bola Tinubu has directed the Nigerian Customs Service to immediately return all seized bags of rice and other grains to their owners for onward retailing in the Nigerian markets.
The Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC), Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, disclosed this on Saturday during a stakeholder meeting at Kwangwalam, a border town in the Maiadua Local Government Area of Katsina State.
He said the directive was given by the president in his magnanimous gesture of ensuring that people of the country have enough food to buy at cheaper prices from the markets.
Adeniyi, however, said the return of the confiscated food items to the owners was based only on the condition that it would be sold in the Nigerian markets.
“The whole idea is to promote food security and ensure that Nigerians will not be living with hunger and Mr President considers this as one of the strategies that can help address the problem of food security.
“We have over 120 trucks of food items for export seized, which means a lot of food items were taken out of our markets, leading to the unavailability that created some pressure on the prices of these food items.
“So, we hope that by the time we restock our markets, it will have some positive effects on the prices,” he said.
The CGC visited former President Muhammadu Buhari in his country home of Daura as well as the emir of Daura, Dr Umar Farouq Umar in his palace where he was conferred with the traditional title of Mabudin Hausa by the emir.(vitalnewsngr.com)
