The Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN) has said that the Nigerian rice market is currently dominated by loads of smuggled foreign rice from neighbouring countries.
RIPAN said local processors recently could not find space on the shelves of rice market to display their own product.
Speaking in an interview with journalists, the Director-General of RIPAN, Andy Ekwelem, said the situation if not address could lead to job loss, as many rice mills would shutdown.
“What I will say is that in the past few years, the major problem the processing industry has apart from the teething problems of infrastructural deficiency or perhaps funding from the commercial bank, which of course now the CBN has come into it, providing funding for the businesses, our major problem is smuggling.
“Since 2011 if I recall our fight, our struggle in this area of business has been smuggling, every time we sit down to talk about the challenges we have, the first thing that comes up is smuggling, it’s so disheartening.
“At a time it was as if the thing abated and then the Federal Government did what I will call the magic of restricting movement in the borders.
“But just immediately after the #EndSARS and then the reopening of the border, it was as if it was ‘on your marks’ for the smugglers, as I speak to you, Nigeria market is filled up with foreign Rice smuggled through the Benin Republic and some coming through the Niger Republic along the Daura axis.
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“Nigerian processors can’t find a place to display their products in the shelves again, all over the market even in supermarkets, in big shops in the open market,” he said.
He called on the Federal Government to intervene and save rice processing from collapse and also save jobs, especially for the youth.
“So it’s now a matter of concern that we think the Federal Government has to look into it and address the matter, if not, of course, what we will see is that most of the mills are going to shut down, of course, some of them are working on half capacity now and of course there’s nobody to off-take whatever they have produced for the Nigerian Market.
“They are going to shut down, investments are going to close down, jobs are going to be lost and we don’t want that to happen,” he noted.
He said currently, over 13 million Nigerians are employed directly in the various rice mills, while the small scale or cottage rice mills numbering about 3.2 million employees an average of five persons per mill.
“We don’t want people to lose their jobs now, especially youths who are engaged in these various rice mills. It might interest you to know that the entire rice processing industry comprising of the large integrated rice. ills where we as RIPAN are and then the middle scale rice Mills and of course the cottage industry rice mills employes over 13 million Nigerians directly.
“In the association, we employ over 15,000 people, for our registered members, we are 45 members of the association.
“There are over 3.2 million small scale and cottage industry rice mills scattered across the country and each of these mills employs not less than five people,” he added.
He commended the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for sustaining the tempo of ensuring that both farmers and processors were carried along in the various intervention programs.
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