By Zubaida Baba Ibrahim
Despite being Africa’s highest producer of rice, Nigeria spent an average of $4.2 billion on the importation of the commodity in 2018. This statistic, in relation to the size of the foreign exchange revenue of the country that it was taking, formed the basis for which rice importation was banned subsequently.
The ban on importation was also motivated by the quest for the revival of the nation’s economy, which is mainly agrarian. However, the laudable strategy did not stop the smuggling of foreign rice into the country by wayward local and foreign merchants, especially from the neighbouring countries of Niger, Cameroon and Benin Republic, which are not producers of rice but exporters of the commodity.
The smuggling of rice into Nigeria has impeded the positive strides being made by both the private sector and the various government investments in the rice sub-sector, to increase local production capacity.
Bearing the brunt of this misdeed has been the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). Each time the menace arises, the NCS is presumed to have acted in cahoots with lawbreaking individuals, to bring in the prohibited commodity without any scrutiny.
However, on Tuesday May 4, the Senate Committee On Ethics, Privileges and Public Petition ordered the NCS to return the foreign rice it had confiscated from the shops of traders in Ibadan, alleging that the officers who carried out the raid, had erred by descending on the market.
This directive led the Rice Processors Association Nigeria (RIPAN), represented by its Director-General, Andy Ekwelem, to call upon the Senate at a press conference to revisit their resolution on the matter.
“Indeed, we are shocked at the fact that now that the Nigeria Customs Service has decided to do its duties creditably well and wield the big stick against rice smugglers, they are being antagonised and reprimanded by no other organ of government than the Nigerian Senate”, Ekwelem said.
Although it seems like the Senate has no concern for the plight of local rice farmers, rice processors, and the Nigerian economy at large, there are few factors that could give grounds to their order.
One of them is the supply deficit of rice across the country. Rice, as we know, is a staple food in Nigeria, which is consumed across all the geopolitical zones of the country and the socio-economic classes. Yet, KPMG Nigeria has revealed that only about 57 per cent of the 6.7 million metric tons of rice consumed by Nigerians yearly is locally produced. If the population totally depends on the domestic supply of rice, the country could be vulnerable to chronic food shortages, which will skyrocket the price of the commodity way beyond affordability.
Meanwhile, during the press briefing by RIPAN, some journalists pointed out that foreign rice is cheaper in the markets, in comparison to the locally-produced ones.
While imported rice sells within the range of N21,000 to N23,000 per 50kg bag, the domestically produced ones sell within the range of N28,000 to N30,000 for the same quantity, despite being home-grown. They also observed that rice produced in Nigeria is of a much lower quality.
In its response, the RIPAN spokesperson pointed out that some of the challenges in the sector were due to the fact that the processing of rice, from the harvested paddy to tabe-ready edible rice, entails parboiling the raw rice, drying and milling it before it is then destoned, which is an important and distinct feature of its production. The equipment for carrying out this latter stage of the processing cannot be afforded by the small-scale processors, who make up 80 per cent of the local rice producers.
On the raiding of the traders’ shops, the members of the Senate committee argued that the NCS breached the Customs and Excise Managements Act (CEMA), which empowers the agency to only impound smuggled goods within a 40-kilometre radius to the country’s borders.
However, their argument appears as not tenable because the same Act, under section 147(1), states that when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that anything liable to forfeiture under the Customs and Excise laws is in existence, any officer, without prejudice, can, without a warrant, enter a building or any place at any time, and search, seize, detain, remove any such thing.
The interference of the Senate committee in the operations of the Nigerian Customs Service, in response to a moral dilemma, is in every respect ill-judged.
Primarily, it compels one to believe that the Committee is just giving backing to smugglers and economic saboteurs at the expense of the efforts of Customs officers.
Likewise, it also disregards the hard work of the multitude of large-scale farmers, rice processors, and individuals, who are investing in paddy aggregation and agro-input dealerships for the betterment of domestically produced rice.
And if this persists, it can lead to the crash of the entire rice processing and milling sub-sector that employs between thirteen to fifteen million Nigerians, which will lead to the loss of jobs in a country where the labour market is not favourable.
The progress of the local rice production industry in Nigeria is inhibited by several factors like high transportation costs, low mechanisation of rice farms, and the scarcity of labor due to alternative and more remunerative off-farm employment opportunities.
Similarly, other factors include rural-urban migration, high cost of land preparation, and the broad use of genetically inferior varieties that exhibit low productivity.
For this reason, the Federal Government has expended millions to grow local capacity in the rice sub-sector. Nigeria’s Agricultural Credit Scheme (ACSS), Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme, and many other initiatives are the government’s efforts to fund Nigerians who want to grow their own paddies to ensure food security, the conservation of foreign exchange and the diversification of the national economy.
It would be a priority misplacement to embolden miscreants and destroy the collective zeal in the pursuit of guaranteeing Nigeria’s upgrade from a food importing country to a food-producing nation for the benefit of the economy.
Zubaida Baba Ibrahim writes from Abuja, Nigeria. She can be reached via [email protected]
