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Tuesday, December 19,
2017 02:17PM / Ade Adefeko*
Rice
consumption in Nigeria is almost entirely of parboiled rice. In West Africa
only Nigeria consumes parboiled rice. Other West African countries including
all the neighboring countries to Nigeria ( Niger, Benin, Cameroon, Chad) are
not consumers of parboiled rice. In Africa only South Africa is the other major
country that consumes parboiled rice.
The
shipments of parboiled rice from India and Thailand into Lome , Cotonou and
Douala ports is a very fair estimate of smuggled rice into Nigeria as none of these
countries have internal consumption of parboiled rice. All the imports of
parboiled rice into these countries finally find their way into Nigeria.
Smuggling
of Parboiled rice from across the borders (mainly Benin Republic) is creating a
major disaster for the rice industry in Nigeria. The below data which is
collated from the customs department of exporting countries, shows the amount
of rice that are being shipped to Benin, Cameroun, Niger etc. These neighboring
countries don’t consume parboiled rice! All these rice is eventually smuggled
into Nigeria with the full knowledge of these countries respective authorities.
Such
huge quantities of rice cannot be smuggled in without them being loaded into
big trucks or barges! These needs proper roads and hence can be intercepted
easily.
If
the border management is difficult due to the huge swaths of land border, the
authorities can raid the markets and confiscate contraband commodities.
Once this is done no trader would ever buy smuggled rice! If we can’t beat them
at the borders then choke the market place which is within our territory.
The
Nigeria rice farmers and millers are losing livelihoods to smuggling! The
government is not only losing revenue but the self-sufficiency goal as well due
to the heavy influx of smuggled rice from across the borders.
The
industry associations have been notifying the government of this menace but
little has been achieved so far! Moreover the rice millers have found that it
is a challenge to procure large quantity of paddy in a reliable way. As a
result most of the rice mills are operating below capacity.
*Ade Adefeko is the Chairman of NACCIMA EXPORT
Advocacy group
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