The Lagos State Government has blamed saboteurs for the absence of bags of rice produced from the state rice mill in the market, saying some people would buy the rice and re-bag them as foreign rice to be sold outside the state.
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The state commissioner for information and strategy, Gbenga Omotosho, also stated that inadequate paddies in the country is limiting the capacity of the mill to produce as much rice for local consumption.
Recall that former President Muhammadu Buhari in January 2023 unveiled the two million metric tonnes per hour Lagos Rice Mill located in Imota.
The Rice Mill dubbed as the third largest in the world has the capacity to produce 2.5m bags of 50kg rice annually and generate 250,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had said the rice mill is a 2x16MTPH standing on an area of 8.5Ha land with an annual paddy requirement of over 240,000MT to produce 2.5 million bags of 50kg rice per annum.
However since the commissioning of the mill, Lagosians hardly see the bags of rice produced from the mill in the market though the state through other private mills had to subsidize rice for some segments of the population.
But Omotosho in an interview on Mainland FM explained that the scarcity of paddies is a major challenge for the state’s mill in meeting its production capacity.
He also decried the activities of those he called ‘saboteurs’ who buy the locally produced rice and re-bag them as foreign rice to be sold outside the state.
According to him, due to climate change and other factors causing scarcity of paddies, the rice mills across the country are struggling to operate.
“In every part of Nigeria, there are small, small mills and because of the change in weather condition and so many other things, we do not have enough paddies,” he said.
According to him, Lagos State Government is trying as much as possible “to ensure that Lagosians are not short of rice.”
“But there are saboteurs. The rice coming in from the Rice Mill in Imota, you would see some people going to re-bag them and put foreign name on such bags and then take them out of Lagos,” he said.
He added, “That’s is why it is very difficult to see the rice as much as we would have loved to see them.”
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