BY CHIKA OKEKE, Abuja
The Federal Government has disclosed that only public servants with duly registered National Identification Numbers (NIN) would be allowed to purchase a bag of rice at N40,000.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari stated this while flagging off the sale of 30,000 metric tonnes of milled rice.
He said that the essence of restricting the purchase of rice with only persons with NIN was to curtail racketeering.
Kyari pointed out that the rice would be sold strictly to one person per bag, adding that the steps taken by the Federal Government would lead to the crash of food items in the markets.
He said: "The rice, which is to be sold at a flat rate of N40,000 naira only for 50kg is the Federal Government's intervention for the sales of subsidised milled rice to ameliorate the prevailing food crises in Nigeria.
"This food intervention can be said to be timely considering the times and challenges we are in as citizens of this great nation.
"As one of the numerous efforts of the present administration to cushion the effect of high cost of food commodities, kindly join me to applaud the immense efforts of the present administration such as the release of 42,000MT of Assorted Food Commodities (AFC) to vulnerable and the 30,000MT of milled rice which is being flagged-off for sales to Nigerians today (yesterday) 5th September, 2024."
The minister disclosed that COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine war, climate change and other localised factors or challenges were the reasons for the high cost of food prices.
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