AJOKE PHILIP
In other to find a lasting solution to the current food crisis rocking the country, the Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC), Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, in Saturday, said that President Bola Tinubu has directed the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), to return all seized grains to their owners for onward retailing in the Nigerian markets.
In a statement made available to BUSINESSINSIDERNG by the Service Public Relations Officer, Abdullahi Maiwada, the CGC disclosed this during a stakeholder meeting at Kwangwalam, a border town in the Maiadua Local Government Area of Katsina State on Saturday.
He said the directive was given by the president in his magnanimous gesture of ensuring that people of the country have enough food to buy at cheaper prices from the markets.
He said, however, the return of the confiscated food items to the owners was based only on the condition that it would be sold in the Nigerian markets.
“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.
“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,” he said.
The CGC visited former President Muhammadu Buhari in his country home of Daura as well as the emir of Daura, Dr Umar Farouq Umar in his palace where he was conferred with the traditional title of Mabudin Hausa by the emir.