The federal government has said only Nigerians who present a valid National Identification Number (NIN) will be able to purchase it’s 50kg rice at N40,000.
This, the government said, is part of a multi-disciplinary machinery deployed by the government to ensure the transparency, wider reach, and success of the exercise.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, said this when he inaugurated the sale of the subsidised milled rice on Thursday in Abuja.
While noting that the exercise would be carried out across the country, he described the intervention as timely, due to the times and current challenges in the country.
Kyari said that the federal government was aware of the potential challenges associated with the sales of an important staple such as rice, at this critical period.
The minister explained that the process is structured to ensure that one person does not get more than one 50kg bag of rice.
He further said that intending beneficiaries would be “verified using relevant identification mediums such as the NIN and phone numbers to forestall multiple accesses to the commodity by fraudulent individuals at the detriment of other citizens.”
“It is expected that with the injection of 30,000MT (1000 trucks of 30MT each of this important staple into Nigeria’s food balance sheet, it will not only crash the price of rice but also other closer food substitutes and alternatives,” Kyari added.
Explaining the process Nigerians would have to follow to purchase the rice, the Director of Strategic Grains Reserve, Ministry of Agriculture, Dr Haruna Sule, said civil servants could access the grains from the point of sale with their Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
“Once you have any of these three, you present it to the sales operators and it is logged on the platform that has been created.
“After this, you proceed to pay electronically with your ATM; once the payment is done, it is linked to the initial sales operator and it shows that you have paid; then a receipt will be issued with a code number,” he explained.
Sule further stated that with the code number, the buyer would be issued a treasury receipt to show that he or she has paid to government, which shows point of collection and time of collection.
He noted that the point of collection is different from the point of sales, adding that “when you get to the collection point, you present your code to our officials and you will be given a bag of rice.”
In Abuja, Sule said the plan is to set up about five to six sales points across the FCT and the duration of the distribution will be for the period they are able to finish sales.
