‘Hoarding causing unexplained price increase of rice, pasta, others’

The Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Commission has said hoarding is causing the price increase of food commodities, including spaghetti, rice, pasta and sugar.

The Chairman of the state anti-corruption commission, Muhyi Magaji, said this on Sunday after the agency confiscated 10 warehouses with hoarded foodstuffs in Dawanau International Grains Market, Singer Market and Kwari Textiles Market, in the Dawakin Tofa Local Government Area of the state.

He said that owners of the warehouses were nowhere to be found during the operation but they were stacked full of commodities, including spaghetti, rice, pasta, sugar and other food items.

He added, “The owners have been issued notice to report to the commission preparatory to facing charges before the court of law for their illegal activities.

“We have made true our promise that we are going to embark on a fight against the hoarding of essential commodities in the state.

“We started last Thursday and we have made a significant impact towards stopping the instant rise in the price of essential commodities.”

He noted that within a week, the average price of rice had jumped from N52,000 to N61,000.

Magaji said, “From what we have done so far, we are certain that there is an impact. From here we are going to the market to ascertain the situation.

“Firstly, we were able to stop the instant increase in prices of the commodities and secondly we have the belief that if we sustain the tempo, we will be able to bring down the prices from where they have reached.

“One fundamental problem is that each store we enter, they will be claiming that it is the World Food Programme Store.”

” We wonder if the world food programme will starve the country while taking the food somewhere else.

“You can see, I was told here today that the price of maize has jumped from N30,000 to N60,000. So you see, a 100 percent increase, this is unacceptable.

“You can see these stores, there are hundreds of millions of naira worth of hoarded commodities.

“We are taking over the stores now and we are going to make some certain arrests because these will not be tolerated.

”This is not a market, this is a warehouse. We have activated our intelligence mechanism and they have come up with reports on where and how they are hoarding it.”