Amidst economic hardship, President Bola Tinubu has ordered the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) to return all seized rice and other food items back to its owners in local markets.
This was confirmed by the Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC), Bashir Adewale Adeniyi in Katsina during a stakeholder meeting at Kwangwalam on Saturday.
Adeniyi stated that the President’s aim is to ensure there is enough food and it’s easily accessible and this is a way of ensuring food security in the country.
Adeniyi affirms in a statement that returning the food items is a way to make food accessible in the local market.
“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”, he said.
He furthered explains that about 120 trucks of food were seized in the domestic market, “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.”
