Worried by reports credited to big importers under the aegis of Rice Millers Association of Nigeria that rice imports from the Seme boarder are smuggled items, chairman of the Seme border  chapter of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Patrick Ozobialu, has described rice millers as monopolists, who are not comfortable with the stable cost of the product in the market.

According to him, all rice he imports from Seme border are  legitimate and duties duly paid on them, disclosing that smuggling is a global menace which Nigeria is not excluded from.

He said, however, that the Seme border has large  concentration of the nations security agencies, making the border a rare place for very serious crime.

He said liberalisation of rice imports has gone a long way to eliminate smuggling of the item around the border, saying that the smallest importers can import as small as 10 bags pay his duty and he takes good to the market even as he added that liberalisation of importation of the product is fetching the federal government lots of revenue from customs duties which would have gone to smugglers before now.

While urging Nigerians to change the mentality of assuming that all rice cargo coming in from Seme border were smuggled, he said, the cause of the worry of the monopolists is the government policy liberalising importation of rice which has made it impossible for them to apply any of their antics to continue to rip-off Nigerians.

“All they went is to deceive the government to ban importation of the product from Seme border so that they could continue to manipulate the cost of the items in the market.  They are the same people that we are not sure they can afford to use their big money to tempt the custom officers and the nation loses billions of naira as a result of the activities of these monopolists. What is wrong with anybody who can import allowed to import? He queried.

“Let those people who claim that they are milling rice show it, if they can mill enough rice for the nation let them show it. I think time has come for Nigerians to call the bluff of these pretenders who hid under the guise of one manufacturing group or the other to get government to ban the importation of one product or the other only for them to turn around  to become sole importers. It is a fraud and it is unfair to the people of this country”, he stressed.

He said since Nigeria has not started to produce enough of the food-stuff, the policy is the best for the country to avoid unnecessary loses of revenues. “ It is like the issue of second-hand clothing that is banned but its sold at every nook and cranny of the country and is worn by almost all and sundry. So what is the sense in the ban”.  Only the economy loses because the duty is not being paid to the coffers of  government”, he said.