The recent drama displayed by the Oyo State Government and Nigerian
\nCustom Service (NCS) on 1800 bags of rice donated by the federal
\ngovernment as palliative to cushion the effect of the lockdown order
\noccasioned by COVID-19 on the people of Oyo State shows clearly the
\nnature and character of Nigerian government regarding her citizens.<\/p>\n
The Oyo State government had through the Special Adviser to the State
\nGovernor, Debo Akande on 24th April, 2020 stated that the rice delivered
\nto the State as palliative from the Federal government was unhealthy for
\nhuman consumption and would be returned to the NCS office.<\/p>\n
However, the Public Relations Officer of Oyo\/Osun Command, Abdullahi
\nLagos\u00a0 insisted that the command was embarrassed to hear that the rice
\nallocated to Oyo state were infected with weevils and unfit for human
\nconsumption citing other States such as Osun, Ekiti, among others that
\nalso collected their rice from the same location without complaint.<\/p>\n
In a display that seems to be like drama,\u00a0 the officers at the Zonal
\nHeadquarters of the Nigerian Customs in Ibadan\u00a0 sighting the officials
\nled by the Commissioner for Agriculture, Ojemuyiwa Ojekunle on the
\nmission to return the rice shut the doors of the command and refused to
\naccept the alleged contaminated rice from them.<\/p>\n
By interpretation, the command sees the returned rice as a tactic by the
\nOyo State government to paint the NCS and Federal government in bad
\nlight in order to score political goal.<\/p>\n
Governor Seyi Makinde had since his inauguration in 2019 embarked on the
\nquest to reposition the PDP in the South West region. At one of the
\nmeetings held with the stakeholders of the party in Lagos State, the
\nGovernor stated that very soon PDP will take over the region including
\nthe Lagos State\u00a0 from APC.<\/p>\n
To achieve this goal means that the Governor and PDP stakeholders in the
\nregion have to do a lot of political permutations and calculations which
\nmight include this kind of rice saga though, the Comptroller-General of
\nCustoms, retired Col. Hameed Ali, had once said in 2019, that 99 per
\ncent of rice smuggled through the land borders is not fit for human
\nconsumption.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it is the same rice that the president Buhari ordered the
\nNCS to distribute to the States as palliative. Though, the president did
\nnot mentioned contaminated rice in his directive on 6th April, but the
\nseized rice from the smugglers.<\/p>\n
This became more complicated by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs,
\nDisaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq’s attempt
\nto drag the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control
\n(NAFDAC) to the imbrogilo through her comment and the immediate counter
\nreaction from the NAFDAC.<\/p>\n
However, whether the contaminated rice is from the NCS or Oyo State
\nGovernment, the real issue is that why must a government elected by the
\npeople distribute such unhealthy food to the people in the name of
\npalliative?<\/p>\n
This and many other reasons are responsible for different suspicion
\ntheories revolving the shared rice in the country despite the high level
\nof hunger in the land. In Ondo State for instance, the State government
\nhad to carried out a quality control test on the rice to determine
\nwhether the retained ones out the rice given to the State are good for
\nconsumption.<\/p>\n
However, the distribution of unhealthy food as palliative to Nigerians
\nare not only limited to the Federal and Oyo State governments as the
\nreport of such toxic food continues to increase in the country.<\/p>\n
For instance, there was a report of some youths in the Agege area of
\nLagos State that turned some of the breads given to them by honorable
\nMudashiru Obasa, Speaker of the State’s House of Assembly, to football.<\/p>\n
Likewise some people in Osun State who accused the State government of
\ndistributing poisonous rice as palliative. The same story is told by
\nIdowu Adekoya, a lady in Ogun State who publicly caused the Governor of
\nOgun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun and his family for distributing beans
\nfull of stone as a palliative in a Twitter video that went viral before
\nshe later recanted her words in another video after alot of pressure
\nmounted on her covertly.<\/p>\n
This revelation seems to reviewed the nature and character of Nigerian
\ngovernment at all levels regarding her citizens and how good intentions
\ncan be politicized by the politicans in order to score political goal
\neven at the detriment of the health and welfare of the people that
\nelected them.<\/p>\n
And how good products can turn to bad products at the mercy of
\ncorruption which actually is one of the reasons institutions like
\nanti-corruption agencies exist.<\/p>\n
So, now that it is obvious that there is a foul play somewhere, the
\nICPC, EFCC and sister agencies should swing into action in order to
\nunravel the mystery behind the poisonous rice that has become a chess
\ngame between the NCS and Oyo State government so that the culprits can
\nbe sent to the quarantine center built for corrupt and wicked
\nindividuals that have turned COVID-19 to “COVID-419” in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Femi Oluwasanmi, a Public Affairs Analyst,
\nIbafo,
\nOgun State<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recent drama displayed by the Oyo State Government and Nigerian Custom Service (NCS) on 1800 bags of rice donated by the federal government as palliative to cushion the effect…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n